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Don’t eat the flowers!
GateHouse News Service
Thu Jul 05, 2007, 07:31 PM EDT
Clinton -
Wait! Don’t eat that flower! I don’t want to be an alarmist, and I certainly don’t want to do or say anything to detract from the burgeoning popularity of gardening. But with all the cooking show hosts tossing flowers into their salads and every magazine on the rack touting herbs for your health, I felt that it was time for a word or two of warning.
Just because a plant is natural, grows in your backyard or local vacant lot, and is green or looks tasty, doesn’t mean it is safe for you to eat. Very potent medications, used in microscopic quantities, are derived from plants, and very potent poisons hide in some very attractive flowers and berries. And even when we do know better, small children can’t be expected to know.
What called this to mind this week was the purchase of a Datura stramonium that was actually labeled poisonous. Hybrids of Datura (in its common form in New England known as jimsonweed, thorn apple or angel’s trumpet) and its tropical relative Brugmansia have become very popular for their large, exotic, trumpet-shaped, sweetly night-scented blossoms. (The leaves, on the other hand, are large, coarse and foul-smelling.) The tropical forms can become shrub-sized and must be wintered over indoors as they are tender perennials. But all parts of these plants are extremely poisonous, even the seeds in their spiny, egg-shaped pods – “a fatal dose for a child being about 20.”*
The entire plant contains alkaloids, including atropine and scopolamine, which harmfully effect the nervous system, the liver and other organs. Yet this was the first time I’ve actually seen a nursery label either of these plants poisonous.
Another group of plants gaining popularity is Christmas and Lenten roses, Helleborus niger and H.purpurascens. They graced the covers of a number of catalogs and are appealing for their willingness to bloom when snow is still on the ground. But again, all parts of these plants are very toxic, effecting the heart and central nervous system.
One of my favorite plants, and one increasingly seen in display gardens or where ever a dramatic impact is needed, is castor bean or castor oil plant, Ricinus communis. Native to India and Africa, the plant has been grown for the oil in its seeds since ancient times. Growing 6 to 12 feet tall with enormous palmate leaves in red or bronze and red spiny seed pods, it makes a wonderful backdrop to other plants, especially grasses or cannas. But the fingernail-sized oval seeds with attractive brown mottling are very dangerous – eating two or three can be fatal.* (The oil used for medicinal purposes is treated to remove the toxins.) The rest of the plant is also toxic, containing toxic albumins and alkaloids.
Another dangerous plant that is especially attractive to children is pokeweed or poke berry, Phytolacca Americana. It is rarely grown in gardens, but is found every where its seeds can be dropped by birds: fields, roadsides, even cracks in the sidewalk. Resembling a small tree with large, avocado-green leaves and reddish stems, its berries hang invitingly in clusters at the ends of branches, large, purple and juicy. The roots, stems and leaves are more toxic, containing triterpene saponins, but the berries, while rarely causing fatalities, can cause serious intestinal irritation. Only the tender young shoots are edible, picked when less than 6 inches tall and cooked like asparagus.
Another common garden flower, one I’ve grown everywhere I have lived, sweet and innocent in appearance, is lily-of-the-valley, Convallaria majalis. It has a long history of uses: medicinal (for heart conditions), dye plant (yellow), and even as an ingredient in snuff. But all parts of the plant contain glycosides and saponins, both toxic. The attractive red berries can cause respiratory failure and paralysis. So, while the glycosides when isolated are “considered as effective and safer than digitalin from foxglove for regulating heart action,”* that activity should be left to the pharmaceutical firms and physicians.
And speaking of foxglove, most of us are familiar with the stately members of the Digitalis family; the common biennial with its spire of pink or white thimble-shaped flowers with their ominous interior mottling or the perennial form with soft yellow “glove-fingers.” And once again, all parts of these plants are poisonous. They are grown commercially for their constituents of cardiac glycosides: digitoxin and digoxin, potent medications that strengthen and regulate heart action.
So, with this one as with all the previous plants, enjoy them where they stand. Appreciate their exotic nature or their delicacy or their rampant exuberance. But don’t be lulled by the lack of skull and crossbones waving from their stems into tossing them into your salads or letting your children pop berries into their mouths. Gardeners and parents, beware!
*The Illustrated Book of Herbs Their Medicinal and Culinary Uses, Ed. Sarah Bunney.
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