environmentalgraffiti.com — My family has been in landscaping for five generations now, and I’ve been doing it for ten. I’m 22. You do the math. Given all of that, I kind of had to make my own fun with it– and so here’s five plants you probably own that can totally kill you.
Mar 28, 2008 View in Crawl 4
suheezMar 30, 2008
NOT marijuana
windreaverMar 30, 2008
Potatoes will produce a toxin if exposed to the air while growing.From Wikipedia:Potatoes contain glycoalkaloids, toxic compounds, of which the most prevalent are solanine and chaconine. Cooking at high temperatures (over 170 °C or 340 °F) partly destroys these. The concentration of glycoalkaloid in wild potatoes suffices to produce toxic effects in humans. Glycoalkaloids occur in the greatest concentrations just underneath the skin of the tuber, and they increase with age and exposure to light. Glycoalkaloids may cause headaches, diarrhea, cramps and in severe cases coma and death; however, poisoning from potatoes occurs very rarely. Light exposure also causes greening, thus giving a visual clue as to areas of the tuber that may have become more toxic; however, this does not provide a definitive guide, as greening and glycoalkaloid accumulation can occur independently of each other. Some varieties of potato contain greater glycoalkaloid concentrations than others; breeders developing new varieties test for this, and sometimes have to discard an otherwise promising cultivar.
whitemaMar 30, 2008
"My family has been in landscaping for five generations now, and I ’ve been doing it for ten"Wow, for 200 years old, you think he'd know more than that.....
epiloniousMar 30, 2008
No one ever hears it coming.
partrowMar 30, 2008
It really isn't amazing, it is just a fact that most "poisonous" plants and "toxic" items that are available are not toxic enough to kill or permanently harm us with the small amounts a person might take in. We also have very good poison control centers and medical teams which are well trained in the many compounds that we might be exposed to. Keep in mind that this curiosity is the method by which the early people in an area would use to determine uses and toxicity of the many natural flora and fauna they found around them.
jtbandesMar 30, 2008
Because we're not meant to be mostly eating flowers.
atashMar 30, 2008
Most of these plants aren't what I would call "household" (maybe he just meant "common"), several of them are misidentified, the Rhododendron pictured is a Vireya (Rhododenron zoellerii) native to New Guinea that the Delaware Indians never had anything to do with, and the deadliness of most of those plants is wildly exaggerated. Narcissus for example are hallucinogenic--yes, they could kill in high enough doses but that would take plenty of them, and they are one of the most poisonous of the list.<a class="user" href="http://museum.gov.ns.ca/poison/?section=species&id=100">http://museum.gov.ns.ca/poison/?section=species&id ...</a>"Narcissus and daffodils (as well as tulips) rarely cause fatalities, but they do contain toxic alkaloids that may cause dizziness, abdominal pain and upset, and occasionally, convulsions if eaten."Apple seeds have very little cyanide in them and even a mouse would not keel over dead from eating a belly full of them.