Monty Don on gardeningLife and style This article is more than 21 years oldWhat's your poison?
This article is more than 21 years oldAs if the world's not dangerous enough already... Monty Don digs up the back-yard troublemakers.Seven years ago I wrote a piece about plants that could harm you and said, 'We want the world to hold dangers and bogeys in order that we might have solace from them... If there was no nasty food we would invent it - just so that we might enjoy the delicious food the more. We can only measure beauty in terms of ugliness. So we explicitly hunt out or invent dangers, in order to feel truly safe.' How times have changed. The world feels about as precarious as it has ever done in my lifetime, and I go back past the Bay of Pigs and Suez (just). We have that most lethal combination of all, messianic leaders of every kind armed to the teeth, running around saying 'I am in the right. Trust me'. No.
Well, the dangerous plants remain, neither for nor against anything, just quietly being and just as potentially problematic to the gardener. So, to cheer us all up, it is time to have another look at them.
Starting with trees, probably the most poisonous plant in the average garden is the common yew, Taxus baccata. Every part of the plant, other than the pulp around the seed, is poisonous. Any grazing animals (and, oddly, my in-laws' dog) are likely to get sick if not dead from chewing yew. Dead branches are supposedly more lethal than living. But humans need not worry. While it is best to keep any yew from children's mouths, no one, to my knowledge, has ever died of yew poisoning and many cancer sufferers have benefited from taxol (an extract from yew hedge-trimmings).
Much more worrying is laburnum, Laburnum anagyroides. Our laburnum really came into its own last year, four years after planting. There was one magical evening (the digital image says 26 May 9:05pm) when the evening sun hit only the hanging racemes of yellow flowers and turned the whole thing into a tree dripping gold down into the shadows below. But the seed and wood both contain the poisonous alkaloid cytisine, and it is a legume so the seeds are carried in pods not dissimilar to a pea pod.
Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) is not poisonous but probably twice as dangerous. It is considered to be bad luck to bring the blossom indoors, mainly, I think, because the crown of thorns was reputed to be made from blackthorn. If so, ouch. The thorns are very long and very sharp and have a habit of breaking off under the skin and then going septic. I also, by the by, read that Black Rod, he of the door-knocking in parliament, is so called because he carries a knocking rod made from blackthorn. Case proven.
One of our walls and the hedge outside the kitchen window is filled with woody nightshade or Solanum dulcamara. This is a sprawling cousin of the potato and tomato and has rather pretty purple flowers and scarlet berries which are very bitter. It is often called deadly nightshade whereas, in fact, its intense bitterness is unpleasant rather than harmful. Not so the 'real' deadly nightshade (Atropa bella-donna), which is a less woody herbaceous perennial. It was spread around Britain by the Romans who especially valued the cosmetic side effects of its powerful poison. The plant synthesises the alkaloid atropine (hence its name) and even greater quantities of hyoscyamine that is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream if ingested and, among other symptoms, makes the pupils dilate, which is why Roman women made eye drops of the stuff, in order that they might become big-eyed beautiful ladies (hence its name). The danger is that you become big-eyed dead or very sick ladies.
We have clumps of hemlock (Conium maculatum) growing in our orchard, looking like clumps of huge cow parsley. It is very poisonous and famously did for Socrates. It smells like a dirty mouse cage. Culpeper recommended a cold poultice of the leaves 'applied to the priveties' to cure lustful thoughts.
You don't have to be remotely exotic or obscure to be exposed to the dangers of the garden. A hearty portion of spinach, accompanied by an equal measure of chard, followed by treble helpings of rhubarb will load you with so much oxalic acid that you would be very sorry for yourself indeed. The leaves of rhubarb have a much higher concentration than the stalks, and it is them that are regarded as poisonous.
The purple-flowered spires of wild monkshood, Aconitum anglicum, and its garden version, Aconitum napellus, is heavy with poison, especially in the roots. The Saxons called it wolfsbane because they dipped their arrowheads in the juice before hunting wolves. If you rub your skin with the juice it causes first tingling and then numbness.
Most people know that foxgloves are powerful medicine and that the digitoxin in the leaves helps heart disease. But the correct dose is vital and it can become - and was - a lethal poison if taken randomly. Before its careful analysis (it was one of the first plants to be incorporated into conventional medicine), infusions of the leaves were used for dropsy, sore throats and bruises, and sometimes killed as well as cured.
However careful you are, you cannot help getting the white, sticky juice of euphorbia on your skin, and if this is combined with sunshine the resulting rash can be seriously uncomfortable. But to exclude euphorbias because of this risk would be an unacceptable trade off.
Giant hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum) is equally risky. If skin comes into contact with its clear sap, then is exposed to sunlight, painful, burning blisters are produced that may develop into purplish or blackened scars. It is illegal to grow it for this reason.
Very legal, but in my experience just as dangerous to grow, is rue, Ruta graveolens. Eating large amounts causes violent stomach pain, vomiting, convulsions and increased photosensitivity which can lead to severe sunburn. I once brushed my bare stomach on a rue bush and got a line of deep burns that caused blisters which took months to heal and scarring that lasted for over a year. Since then I have deported rue from the garden.
Your roots
If you think your child may have eaten a poisonous plant, note the following. Do not try and make them sick. Take them at once to a casualty department or doctor with the offending plant. Symptoms may appear slowly. Note them.
Nightshade is a joint activity between the Medical Toxicology Unit of Guy's and St Thomas's Hospital Trust and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which has an up-to-date list of toxic plants and symptoms. They can be found at the Centre for Economic Botany, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Surrey (020 8332 5699; fax 020 8332 5768; nightshade@rbgkew.org.uk)
Daphne mezereum is an irritant and the red berries are poisonous but, like almost all daphnes, is very beautiful. If you do not grow one yet you should. Visit a garden centre or botanical garden to see them.
Opium poppies are regarded as poisonous, but there is no risk of harm. Broadcast seeds into the border over the next few weeks. They should self-seed and reappear year after year.
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