This little-known plant can cause third-degree burns and even alter human DNA — and it’s all over New York
It looks like an innocent flower, but it’s so dangerous it can alter human DNA.
The Giant Hogweed is one of the most dangerous invasive plants in the US — and it’s all over New York state.
The hogweed is packed with sap that causes phytophotodermatitis — meaning it stops the skin’s ability to protect itself from the sun’s harmful rays. In extreme cases, exposure can result in third-degree burns and even blindness. And the effects can last months, or even years.
Even just brushing against a Hogweed is enough to cause painful pustules and skin damage. And most people who come into contact with the noxious weed, don’t even realize it until it’s too late.
That’s what happened to Patryck Jones when he spent a hot day last July clearing the brush around his church in Syracuse.
Jones, 33, used a weed wacker to chop down stalks of Giant Hogweed — a towering plant with harmless-looking white flowers similar to Baby’s Breath.
About 30 minutes later, he started to feel itching and burning on his skin.
“I thought I had gotten into a patch of stinging nettle so I put some cortisone cream on it and went about my day,” the assistant pastor at Life Church told The Post.
“It wasn’t until the following week that it progressed … It was intense burning, itching and swelling. It broke into pustules and blisters that broke open and left open sores.”
The nasty reaction to Giant Hogweed sap can be made worse by sweat — a dangerous hazard for a plant that blooms in the heat of the summer.
“It’s supposed to be pretty, pretty painful for the first couple days, at least,” explained Daniel H. Waldhorn, an expert on the invasive plant for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, adding that the effects can last months and even years.
In Jones’ case, the blistering rash was contained to his legs, though his hands suffered some inflammation — all of which was made worse when it triggered the pastor’s Lyme disease.
Brought into the US from the Caucasus Mountains in Russia and Eurasia more than two centuries ago, Giant Hogweed quickly became known as a dangerous foreign predator, causing horrific burns to people and animals who dare come too close, while wiping out native plants.
It is especially prevalent in New York, thanks to unsuspecting garden centers that sold the pretty flowering plant in the early 1900s.
The invasive plant is present in all but nine of New York’s 62 counties, with nearly 1,150 active sites stretching across the Empire State. Several dozen are infested with more than 400 hogweed plants each.
Just ten cases of Giant Hogweed exposure were reported to the Upstate Poison Control Center, which handles all of New York except New York City and Long Island, in the last five years — but the low cases could be deceiving.
“It could be undercounting,” Waldhorn said.
“We’ll get a lot of people reporting that they’ve been burned by Giant Hogweed, and then we’ll ask them to send photographs, and then it ends up being a different plant. Often it’s Wild Parsnip, which is another plant in the same family that can cause a pretty similar burn, and that plant is actually pretty widespread.
“There’s some people who were burned by Giant Hogweed who maybe never reported it. So it’s kind of tricky to say exactly how many people are burned, but we definitely get a handful per year.”
Since 2020, burns have been reported in Genesee, Steuben, Erie, Oneida, Broome, Warren, Monroe and Onondaga counties.
Despite his reaction being severe and long-lasting, Jones never reported his Hogweed exposure to authorities.
His doctor prescribed an ointment and antibiotics, but the blisters lasted more than two weeks to calm down. It took a full month for the rash to vanish — but it left behind scarring on both of Jones’ legs.
Even a year later, the rash flares up occasionally with seemingly no known trigger.
“Nothing in particular, they come randomly. Usually just intense blisters and itching,” Jones said.
With each plant spitting out up to 100,000 seeds, it’s no surprise why Hogweed — which is federally listed as a noxious weed — is proving very difficult to eradicate.
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has been working to extinguish sites where the invasive plant grows since it launched a Hogweed control program in 2008.
The DEC encourages people who think they’ve stumbled on Giant Hogweed to report it to authorities so they can inspect the area and safely exterminate the plants.
Cutting down the stalks with a weed whacker — as Jones did — is one of the worst things to do because it causes the sap to spray everywhere.
Experts say the easiest way to prevent a potential exposure is to steer clear of the plant altogether.
