Should you be walking along a damp abandoned railroad right-of-way, a wet roadside ditch or a stream bank and stumble upon a plant that looks like Queen Anne’s Lace with an attitude – more than 10 feet tall with two-inch thick stems, flowers two or more feet across and leaf clusters as wide as you can stretch your arms – stay clear! You have just become one of an increasing number of New Yorkers who have met the state’s most striking, and dangerous, invasive plant, the giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) and you absolutely do not want to touch it and take it home to the family. Giant hogweed can make a case of poison ivy seem like a mild itch.