Poisonous plants to be aware of

[trishs]

Since I have mentioned the problem we have experienced with Dog's Mercury and at least one person on the forum (George) has mentioned he wasn't aware of the plant, then I thought it might be useful to have a thread about the various toxic plants that we all might come into contact with at some point.  Here's a couple of informative links about Dog's Mercury worth reading if you are not familiar with this plant.

http://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/m/merdog31.html
http://www.bmj.com/content/287/6409/1924

Note from Moderator:  I think this is worthy of its own Board Trish, so I've created one in the "Plants" section, called it 'Poisonous' and moved your topic there.

[NightHawk]

Great start to what should be an interesting topic Trish.

If anyone has knowledge of such plants, please don't just add them to this thread.  Start a new Topic with the plant name in the newly created Board.

[Palustris]

Perhaps I would be permitted to put in a word here. There is a difference between 'poisonous' and 'toxic'. Carrots are poisonous but you would have to eat a humongous amount to kill yourself, whereas Water Hemlock is toxic, only a small amount is lethal.

[newplantguy]

If you visit the RHS website you,will find a link to potentially harmful plants giving the risks, and what to do if there is a problem, you have to put things in perspective though I mean if you have a bird table in the garden there are some very strange plants that can arise from the seed that is dropped around the table and the garden! I receive quite a lot of enquires a about these plants.

[trishs]

Children in theory can be taught to not handle or eat plants around the garden or when playing out but domestic pets have a tendency to occasionally chew things when outdoors.  I mentioned the Dog's Mercury because whilst I know it can be deadly to sheep and cattle it is rarely mentioned in comparison to  Ragwort, and many people aren't even aware of the dangers of that.  Ragwort can at least be fairly easily removed, but not so Dog's Mercury. 
http://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/flora-and-fauna/dogs-mercury/comment-page-1/#comment-16998

[Eric Hardy]

I haven't been aware of Dogs Mercury either. I have just Googled some illustrations and it looks quite an innocuous woodland plant. We certainly didn't have it on the common where we grazed our horses and donkeys. We were, of course,  aware of Ragwort, but interestingly the animals wouldn't touch it.

Eric H