Plants that can kill

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adampembs
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Plants that can kill

Post by adampembs »

Usually the second question you are asked by Joe Public when you are on a foray is "are they poisonous?" - the idea of edibility seems impossible to escape wrt fungi and yet not with plants. Here is a garden dedicated to poisonous plants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tboW11dMeKs
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Fenwickfield
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Re: Plants that can kill

Post by Fenwickfield »

This place is near were I live the chap that set the garden up a few years ago did a talk at our local Scottish Wildlife Trust meeting and it was fascinating but there were a few worried husbands by the end of the night. I have experience with hogweed it does not just have to be giant hogweed that burns your skin normal hogweed does too I had a terrible case of this after strimming a customers orchard I had a short sleeved tee shirt on and it went on my arms and neck I never thought anything of it until the next day it was very sunny so tea shirt again and the suns rays react with the chemical in the plant even if you have had a good bath I came up in massive blisters for weeks.

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Simon Horsnall
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Re: Plants that can kill

Post by Simon Horsnall »

I know this is resurrecting a very old thread but I had to laugh at a headline which appeared about a fortnight ago:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-66136682

As far as I am aware, nobody has ever been killed by brushing past Hemlock. The story does say "fatal if ingested" but buries it in the hype. As it is, I am impressed that Hemlock and Cow Parsley can be distinguished by the general public. I once heard a conversation in a pub beer garden where a child was being advised to avoid the white flowers, with the obvious implication that it was Hogweed. The white flowers were Yarrow.

There seems to be a movement to sanitise nature, and this includes removing "all" poisonous plants (Oh, we can make an exception for Bluebells, Foxgloves, Honeysuckle...) I wonder whether this is why I sometimes see whole troops of fungi kicked over, perhaps in the mistaken belief that they are then killed.
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