[HN Gopher] Spotted water hemlock: the most toxic plant in North...
___________________________________________________________________
Spotted water hemlock: the most toxic plant in North America (2017)
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 69 points
Date : 2024-01-15 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| waingake wrote:
| Sounds like it has the same effect on mammals as fly spray does
| on insects?
|
| i.e death via full body convulsions
| EA-3167 wrote:
| It disrupts the nervous system, so in that sense it is similar.
| There is a fundamental difference in action though, pesticides
| (like most nerve agents) are based on a structure called an
| organophosphate (general structure O=P(OR)3 ). Most pesticides
| and nerve agents act on something called acetylcholine (ACh) or
| the enzyme that breaks it down, called acetylcholineesteraste
| (AChE). There are other classes though, such as sodium channel
| blockers, and in the case of water hemlock it's a bit strange.
|
| No one is 100% sure just what the mechanism is, but it appears
| to have something to do with GABA. In particular cicutoxin (the
| active molecule) seems to hyper-excite the receptors involving
| GABA, which leads to seizures and death. It's interesting in
| that sense, it's much more violent than most nerve agents, for
| which the seizures and so on are just side-effects, not the
| lethal mechanism.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| > In particular cicutoxin (the active molecule) seems to
| hyper-excite the receptors involving GABA
|
| Other way round. Cicutoxin is an ANTagonist to GABA
| receptors, pretty much the opposite of classical sleeping
| pills (benzodiazepines and z-drugs). As such, taking it is
| probably extremely similar to delirium tremens, the
| potentially deadly manifestation of alcohol, benzo or z-drug
| withdrawal after severe addiction. A horrid way to go.
|
| Hyper excitation of GABA receptors would lead to coma and
| potentially death via cardiac arrest or pulmonary aspiration
| -if it happens, death by benzo overdose must be a truly
| gentle death, but rather unreliable even with extreme dosages
| I would assume.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicutoxin
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine_overdose
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens
| aschla wrote:
| "Within the expansive Apiaceae family are some of the tastiest
| ... food plants in the world: ..., celery..."
|
| Hmm, we have different tastes.
| nsajko wrote:
| It's pretty big as a seasoning/spice.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Tastes like soap. So, big for people who like soap.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Are you thinking of cilantro? Never heard anyone say that
| of celery, only cilantro.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Cilantro too.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Exactly, the famously soap-tasting vegetable... carrot
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Is there some genetic condition that makes you hate the taste
| of pretty much all that plant family? I like a very slight
| anise flavour in cookies, and carrots are pretty versatile, but
| all of the others are on my "everybody but me loves them but
| you can ruin any dish with them" list.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Celery is one of the main vegetables in mirepoix (an essential
| part of French and French-influenced cooking), soffritto (an
| essential part of Italian cooking used for most sauces), and is
| also used in many soups, stocks, and stews. I think you like it
| a lot more than you realize; you're just only thinking of
| eating it whole, raw.
| bitshiftfaced wrote:
| Right, it's an "aromatic," and many dishes wouldn't taste
| right without it. Or, if you only ever eat dishes that don't
| call for it, I feel sorry for you.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Even raw it can be lovely, _very_ finely diced into something
| like egg or chicken salad. It adds a bit of savory crunch, a
| lightness and some of that aromatic zip.
|
| Finely diced pickle can do the same thing though, for people
| who _really_ hate celery.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I used to think like this. It's mainly because my only
| encounters with celery were teachers who thought celery and
| peanut butter was a good "snack" for kids. Gross.
|
| But in cooking, it's great. The purpose of celery is to break
| up the rush of flavor that sauce brings. For example in a stir
| fry, meat and rice tend to take on the flavor of the sauce (or
| even become enhanced by it). Celery does not. Sauce doesn't
| stick to it. Celery adds dynamics to a dish by adding a pause
| to the flavor. And in the context of a mouth full of meat and
| sauce and rice and peppers, celery gives it all meaning by
| being none of that.
| jinpa_zangpo wrote:
| And prescribed in homeopathy under the name Cicuta Virosa.
|
| (https://plankhomeopathy.com/blog/cicuta-virosa/)
| zoky wrote:
| Well to be fair that's literally just water...
| macintux wrote:
| > Homeopathic medicines are prepared by potentization where the
| dynamic curative power of the medication is aroused, so
| homeopathic medicines produce negligible side effects.
|
| Well, that makes me feel better.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| Good news, the regular effects are also negligible.
| klyrs wrote:
| To be fair, most of us tend to be dehydrated, so some
| beneficial effect is expected
| 3-cheese-sundae wrote:
| Im guessing nobody dies from this, since 30C is water.
|
| The catch is that they're also without any benefit, and they're
| poorer to boot.
| angiosperm wrote:
| With less money to poison themselves with, then. Among those
| who don't know any better than to buy from homeopaths, that
| may make the difference.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Nice one.
|
| Homeopathic snake oils are diluted so many times they pretty
| much guarantee there are no traces of original substance left
| (they believe the more times it is diluted, the more potent
| healing powers it gets). I think default is 30 times dilution,
| each time with ratio 1:100, so you're left with 1e-60 of
| original, so if you'd put all atoms from milky way (1e68) and
| start homeopathic them, you'd be left with number of atoms that
| make ie. a virus (influenza has roughly 1e8 atoms).
| dylan604 wrote:
| I had no knowledge of snake oil terms, so I was confused by
| the "30C is just water". So after reading your comment, I had
| to go look it up and came across this [0] with description of
| the terms. For anyone else ignorant of snake oils ;-)
|
| [0] https://homeosource.org/how-tos-for-homeopathy/what-does-
| hom...
| angiosperm wrote:
| To be fair, the water used for dilution has orders of
| magnitude more of stuff already dissolved in it, if only
| from the person breathing on it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Surely, you're not implying that someone making a snake
| oil would be doing so in a non-sterile environment
| without any kind good manufacturing practices being used.
| These things seem so trust worthy. I mean, even the
| government feels they need no regulations because they do
| it so well themselves.
| angiosperm wrote:
| To be fair, most probably don't actually bother with the
| original solute, and instead sell straight-up distilled
| water. Or just tap water.
| Beijinger wrote:
| This seems to be a relative of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium_maculatum
|
| (spotted water hemlock vs poison hemlock)
|
| This exists in Europe. Socrates used this plant to kill himself.
|
| Never ever touch this plant. Don't ask me how I know this. :-(
| brookst wrote:
| Sorry, but now I have to ask how you know this...
| renewiltord wrote:
| He's obviously Sacrotes, the AliExpress version, who ate
| spotted water hemlock instead of poison hemlock.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Hemlock and Sun make a nasty pie:
|
| https://www.leben-und-
| erziehen.de/kind/gesundheit/riesenbaer...
| littlestymaar wrote:
| This is discussed by the article:
|
| _> There are toxic plants that may kill you but will be nice
| about it. "Poison hemlock is much better," says "Wildman" Steve
| Brill, a New York based foraging expert and tour guide with an
| encyclopedic knowledge of the edible and not-so-edible plants
| of the Northeast. "You just stop breathing and your heart
| stops." Socrates, when choosing death over a life in exile as
| an old man, chose poisoning by poison hemlock. It was a gentle
| death._
|
| _> Poison hemlock is related to spotted water hemlock, but,
| um, only taxonomically, not in the way its poisons affect
| mammals. Here is Brill's explanation of what happens when you
| eat spotted water hemlock:_
|
| _> Every single muscle starts firing and contracting, so you
| have convulsions, you chew your tongue into ribbons, you vomit
| but then you can't open your mouth because the jaw muscles are
| contracting 10 or 20 times as hard as they normally do, and you
| die a horrible death_
| anonreeeeplor wrote:
| Which one. Both?
| angiosperm wrote:
| Socrates used regular poison hemlock. He would have
| recommended not using spotted water hemlock for anything but
| on his political enemies, who had a point.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| Though the effects of both poisons couldn't differ more..
| gentle death one might choose in certain circumstances vs death
| you wouldn't even wish your worst enemy.
|
| Recommend reading the article, not only because of this detail
| and that your "seems" would have become certainty before
| posting, it has even more nice points ;)
| sudobash1 wrote:
| The article mentions that spotted water hemlock is not
| particularly common, but unfortunately the same cannot be said
| for poison hemlock. It is a omnipresent weed around here
| (Pacific Northwest). And it remains poisonous for years after
| it dies, which makes disposal a problem. This also is a huge
| issue if it gets into a hay-field. I have heard that some
| people have tried to burn it, with very poor results.
|
| Also, in this terrible plant family is Cow-Parsnip.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_maximum. If touched, it
| causes your skin to be excessively sensitive to the sun. It is
| basically reverse-sunscreen.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Let us pass silently over hogweed.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| There's also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_(plant)
| from the same family (carrots). If you touch it and go in the
| sun you get crazy sunburns. It is an invasive species common in
| eastern europe (ukraine, russia) where it grows out of control
| and apparently has been detected in 16 states here
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting that it doesn't use the normal advertisements of
| danger (bright red colour, bad taste, etc.). Instead the thing
| looks harmless, tastes nice, and kills mammals at a small dose. I
| suppose it works to protect from anything that herds since
| killing one is sufficient to keep the herd away.
| anonreeeeplor wrote:
| Are cows smart enough to do a post mortem on who ate what
| random plant three hours ago?
| angiosperm wrote:
| Their ancestors were smart enough to stay out of that
| particular thicket, afterward.
|
| Typically they have dug up and eaten the tasty-smelling
| tuber. The most daring cow chowed it while the others
| goggled, and remembered the smell forever after.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Evolution has amazing power to change behaviors in
| inexplicable ways. Sudden reliable death at small doses is a
| fairly powerful evolutionary pressure.
| woleium wrote:
| The ring of convulsing and dead is a bit disconcerting...
| at_a_remove wrote:
| One would think so, but ...
|
| I was on one of those investigative rabbitholes and stopped
| in at various rodent traps. One of the antiques was this
| contraption with eight holes, in a line, in which rats could
| stick their heads and be swiftly killed via your basic
| spring-loaded spinal injury.
|
| Anyway, you could have seven dead or dying rats, heads in,
| and another rat would clamber over the victims, both the
| twitching and the finally-still, just to stick its head in
| the only open hole. The presence of kin corpses and dying
| nestmates was an insufficient deterrent.
| gumby wrote:
| Australia has entered the chat with the Gympie Gympie:
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/world-most-dangerous-shrub-suicide-...
| angiosperm wrote:
| It is always described this way, but people routinely survive it
| if they get to an ICU soon enough.
|
| For my money hogweed is worse, but nobody is tricked by a
| pleasant smell into eating it. Tobacco kills many orders of
| magnitude more than either, year in and year out. Sugar cane,
| even more.
|
| (People enzymatically convert corn sugar to match what comes out
| of sugar cane. Straight-up corn sugar is harmless, "high-
| fructose" is deadly.)
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Tobacco and sugar cane don't belong in the same list. It's like
| dismissing the Boeing door-flying-off incident by saying "Don't
| pay it any mind, motorcycles are far more dangerous overall"
| angiosperm wrote:
| Tobacco and sugar vendors are quick to endorse this
| sentiment.
| postalrat wrote:
| Attempts to frighten people with bullshit rarely work for
| long then backfire.
| angiosperm wrote:
| And then they die, in droves, but neatly out of sight.
| "Nothing to see here, just millions dying from lung and
| throat cancer, and from complications from fatty-liver
| disease." (Vs. barely a couple hundred lately via Boeing,
| conveniently overseas. Between flying 737-Max and
| tobacco, I would recommend the former.)
| sneak wrote:
| Tobacco kills 7x as many in the US as the "opiate crisis"
| every day, week, month, and year. He's got an important
| point.
| angiosperm wrote:
| And sugar way more than tobacco.
| montecarl wrote:
| > People enzymatically convert corn sugar to match what comes
| out of sugar cane. Straight-up corn sugar is harmless, "high-
| fructose" is deadly.
|
| Corn sugar is the monosaccharide glucose (more specifically its
| a specific stereoisomer of glucose called dextrose or
| D-glucose).[1] Cane sugar is sucrose, which is a disaccharide
| of composed of glucose and fructose.[2]
|
| There is no way to enzymatically convert a monosaccharide to a
| disaccharide, you would need to be joining the glucose together
| with a fructose, which, as we are not fruit don't just have
| naturally occurring in our body.
|
| When you eat sucrose, the enzyme sucrase-isomaltase located in
| the small intestine catalyzes its hydrolysis into fructose and
| glucose.[3,4] High-fructose corn syrup is a mixture of glucose
| and fructose which is exactly what you get when your body
| enzymatically breaks down sucrose.[5]
|
| So corn sugar is glucose. Sugar can is sucrose. And high-
| fructose corn syrup is a mixture of "pre-digested" sucrose. I
| think that high-fructose corn syrup is probably bad in that its
| in everything and cheap, but I can't see how its any worse than
| regular sugar. And corn sugar is not the same as regular sugar,
| it lacks fructose entirely.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_sugar
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugarcane
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrase
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrase-isomaltase
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup
| angiosperm wrote:
| Yet, millions of tons of corn sugar is, in fact, made via
| industrial enzymatic process into "high-fructose corn sugar",
| mainly because it is sweeter when cold than straight glucose,
| and doesn't absorb water from air as readily. Cane sugar in
| beverages has typically already separated into glucose and
| fructose, no sucrase needed.
|
| Fructose is a problem because it is processed as a toxin, in
| the liver. Fructose was invented by flowering plants in the
| early Cretaceous because, erg for erg, it tasted sweeter to
| insects. Our evolutionary ancestors never had need to evolve
| means to process much of it. The liver makes it into fat,
| wraps it in cholesterol, and ships it off to the fat cells to
| store, emitting lots of uric acid as waste. Too much uric
| acid causes lots of problems.
|
| If production of cholesterol is inadequate, worse things
| happen.
|
| Fructose is a minor problem _if_ consumed along with enough
| fiber, because enough fiber delays absorption long enough for
| your intestinal bacteria to get a crack at it first. (They
| can eat fructose all day long.) But modern industrial "food"
| processing is all about eliminating fiber, and delivering the
| straight-up stuff. The only actual fruit without enough fiber
| is, oddly, grapes.
| tptacek wrote:
| Again, worth pointing out that none of this fructose stuff
| is really operable, because there isn't a mainstream "low-
| fructose" sugar that anyone uses as a sweetener+. As you
| acknowledged across the thread: HFCS is (if not chemically
| identical) bioavailably the same thing as cane sugar.
|
| + _Other sugars get used for functional reasons other than
| sweetening, of course._
| angiosperm wrote:
| You can buy straight glucose, sold as "corn sugar", from
| brewery suppliers. In the US they would like to sell you
| a 50-pound bag for $100, but a 10-pound bag for $20
| should last you a long time. It _all_ comes, ultimately,
| from Tate and Lyle. It may also be labeled "dextrose";
| same stuff. They will let you pay as much as you like.
| (Some claim to offer "organic", but there is really no
| way to tell and, by the evidence, they are probably just
| re-bagging it with a new label, and lying. Enforcement is
| nonexistent.)
|
| There are other sugars, maltose, [not lactose] with
| varying numbers of glucose molecules stitched end on end,
| collectively amyloses. With enough, it becomes starch.
|
| There is also left-handed enantiomeric glucose, zero
| calories, expensive, and racemic glucose, 50% calories.
| The latter is made from raw chemicals. Guessing they make
| the former by feeding the latter to bugs and selling what
| is left over, although there are crystallization tricks.
|
| I bake with corn sugar, and it works fine. I have found
| that hot chocolate made with it is unsatisfying without a
| half-teaspoon of table sugar added. Or a marshmallow.
| hollerith wrote:
| >lactose, etc. Those are just varying numbers of glucose
| molecules stitched end on end.
|
| Not so: lactose is a glucose stitched to a galactose
| molecule.
| angiosperm wrote:
| I am corrected. Chemistry offers a limitless supply of
| complications.
| hollerith wrote:
| > Our evolutionary ancestors never had need to evolve means
| to process much of it.
|
| That's not true because about half of the carbs in fruits
| and vegetables is fructose. (Cherries have the lowest ratio
| I know about at about 30%; apples and pears have the
| highest at around 70%; most fruits and vegetable are almost
| exactly half fructose and half glucose.)
|
| Also, if you eat a spaghetti meal or a lot of potatoes
| (which rapidly become glucose and get absorbed) your body
| will convert a decent amount of the glucose into fructose
| according to researcher Robert Lustig MD.
|
| (I don't disagree with your overall point that most
| affluent people consume too much fructose. In the ancestral
| environment however calories were scarce enough that people
| should have and did eat almost all the fructose they could
| find.)
| angiosperm wrote:
| Prehistorically, fructose without intermixed fiber was
| found mainly in honeycombs, i.e. rarely. Beverages are
| the way most people get the most concentrated blasts of
| fructose nowadays. With enough fiber, intestinal bacteria
| get first crack at it. (Keep your intestinal bacteria
| well-fed; hungry bacteria will eat you instead.)
|
| Your body has processes to produce fructose, which is
| processed by the liver to fat for storage, when preparing
| for lean times seems indicated.
|
| It is hard to research, but it seems like mangoes have
| the highest proportion of fructose.
| ekimehtor wrote:
| I agree that giant hogweed is worse, maybe not as deadly but
| capable of blinding just from touching it's roots and rubbing
| your eyes. I was unfortunately enough to encounter hogweed
| while prospecting for gold, I was digging into the bank of a
| stream with a hand shovel . I ended up burn like blisters
| arthritis like pain for over two years. Nasty nasty stuff!
| tptacek wrote:
| The health benefits of table sugar over HFCS are a myth. High-
| fructose corn syrup is higher in fructose _relative to normal
| corn syrup_ , not to sugar. The HFCS used in processed foods
| has the same percentage of fructose as table sugar; your body
| does not see a meaningful difference between the two. The whole
| HFCS thing is Mercola science.
|
| Sugar is certainly not good for you. The problem with HFCS is
| that it makes it cheap easy for the food industry to create
| hyperpalatable foods jacked with sugar. But choosing foods with
| "cane sugar" does nothing to improve health outcomes.
| angiosperm wrote:
| "Table sugar" and HFCS are, chemically, the same thing.
|
| HFCS has the commercial benefit of being substantially
| cheaper than cane sugar, in part via massive subsidy by the
| US federal government, and in part because maize is so
| fantastically productive of starch cheap to convert to
| glucose and thence via chemical-engineered wizardry to
| fructose.
|
| HFCS originated as a clever way to consume the massive influx
| of surplus maize produced by the Nixon adminstration's
| agricultural subsidies for mono-crop maize production
| instituted under Earl Butz, still in place. The public health
| catastrophe we still suffer is just an unfortunate side
| effect of the disproportionately representated rural voting
| bloc that keeps the subsidies in place.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| Ah, Earl Butz. The man was quite the comedian.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Him and Ed Meese.
| dilap wrote:
| > "Table sugar" and HFCS are, chemically, the same thing.
|
| in theory, but in practice there can be impurities from the
| production process, e.g.
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00216-012-5817-x
| angiosperm wrote:
| Looks like up to 0.1% a-dicarbonyl.
|
| Dicarbonyls are blamed for "obliterative bronchiolitic
| lung disease", which sounds unpleasant.
| janalsncm wrote:
| There's no first principles reason tobacco is a legal product.
| If it was invented today, as a product which kills or disables
| a large percentage of its users, it would be banned.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Tobacco is anyway in decline after it was demonstrated to
| kill people not directly using it. There have been efforts at
| limiting alcohol, some catastrophic. Practically nothing has
| been done yet about concentrated sugar.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| On the subject of smell, there are some people that can
| distinguish wild carrot from poison hemlock by smell alone.
|
| In a controlled educational setting a sample of both was pass
| around a crowd of about 25 people at different times, and the
| instructor asked if anybody detected a strong smell in either
| sample.
|
| I found the smell of poison hemlock terrible, a kind of
| chemical souring sensation in the back of the nose, as did one
| or two others in the group.
|
| The instructor highlighted that the ratio of people sensitive
| was typically the same in every group, then moved on to another
| topic.
|
| This might be true for water hemlock as well, but I'm not going
| out of my way to find out.
|
| I still identify wild carrot visually, but always do a sniff
| test as a final check.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Funny - I was just picking a ton of these out of my yard last
| summer. They smelled like carrots, which I found interesting. I
| researched them at that time and realized they were indeed known
| as a "wild carrot"
| gregwebs wrote:
| That is probably a different plant also known as Queen Anne's
| Lace, which is an edible wild carrot that is invasive and
| everywhere in the midwest and harmless. It is unfortunate that
| the two look similar. Queen Anne's Lace thrives in dry
| conditions whereas spotted water hemlock as the name implies
| grows in damp conditions.
| angiosperm wrote:
| I saw a great deal of Queen Anne's Lace even in mid-northern
| Finnland.
|
| The most easily-spotted difference is that the flower bunch
| of QAL is flat. On spotted water hemlock, it is smaller
| bunches splayed out.
| _visgean wrote:
| > There are many reports of the spotted water hemlock's use as a
| suicide tool among the Iroquois nation; the most commonly cited
| occasion is upon the discovery of marital infidelity. There are
| plenty of other ways to take your own life; the spotted water
| hemlock is specifically chosen because it causes the most
| horrible, painful death possible.
|
| why would they go for the most painful death possible?
| orenlindsey wrote:
| People didn't always do certain things (like committing
| suicide) the easy way, they often did them in the most dramatic
| way possible. This was generally true up until around the
| Industrial Revolution.
| Jun8 wrote:
| They could be forced into taking it. Or they may choose the
| painful death to erase the shame of the infidelity, similar to
| how seppuku was sometimes done.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| To make the person who wronged you feel extra guilty and
| disgraced in the eyes of the community.
| angiosperm wrote:
| In the news quite recently a woman doused herself with gasoline
| and lit it in protest over wholesale Gaza slaughter. She does
| not seem to have slowed the process.
| MichaelRo wrote:
| I don't eat stuff that I don't totally, 100% know and trust. Wild
| shit, never.
|
| There's this fascination of people towards eating exotic stuff
| (defined as "non domesticated plants"), like wild garlic (Allium
| Ursinum), I see people selling leaves at the market. A slight
| mistake and they're buying Lily Of The Valley which looks very
| similar but will kill you.
|
| Or wild mushroom people. I'm not touching wild mushrooms with a
| barge pole, couldn't give a s*it what experts say and how great
| they taste. I'd rather eat bread and water and stay alive than
| risk kidney failure and agonizing death.
|
| I guess people are curious on experiencing interesting tastes but
| as they say "curiosity killed the cat".
| jimbob45 wrote:
| In fairness, there's a method to eating exotic plants that
| isn't just "ram it down the hatch". You smell, look, and feel
| for anything that seems off-putting. You touch it to your
| tongue and wait 30 minutes to see if anything happens. You make
| sure you're within range of EMS with people around. You eat a
| very small bite to begin with.
|
| But yeah, unironically please don't eat exotic plants I don't
| want anyone to die for a silly reason.
| angiosperm wrote:
| We have this method nowadays not so available to our recent
| ancestors, "look it up". Do that one first.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| There's a theory[0] that the bloke from "Into the Wild"
| died from seeds that weren't in his fieldbook because they
| had never been known to be poisonous at the time. Again,
| though, I agree - pack your own food into the campsite.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless#Swainsoni
| ne_i...
| angiosperm wrote:
| If it's not in your fieldbook, don't eat it.
| elsonrodriguez wrote:
| This is the only way. It is a tautology, but a plant is
| only safe to eat if you know it is safe to eat and can
| identify it correctly.
| angiosperm wrote:
| The South American tapir eats toxic plants all day long
|
| But only one leaf off of each, and then eats kaolin clay.
| Jun8 wrote:
| The tapir is wise as was Mithridates, as told by Housman:
| There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings
| will sit to feast, They get their fill before they
| think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He
| gathered all the springs to birth From the many-venomed
| earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled
| all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned
| sound, Sate the king when healths went round.
| They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch
| him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And
| shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared
| as white's their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt.
| I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died
| old.
| angiosperm wrote:
| But don't neglect the kaolin.
| julianeon wrote:
| There are quite a few plants which can kill you but it's probably
| better that they're not widely known. I knew a guy who worked as
| an ER doc and he talked about how in Sri Lanka there was a widely
| known and common plant which could kill you, and people overdosed
| on it regularly (suicide attempts).
| tptacek wrote:
| Somewhere in the Cooking Issues archive there's a Dave Arnold
| rant about how dangerous foraging apiaceae (I remember him
| referring to them as umbillifers, or maybe less accurately as
| umbillaceae, which I found memorable because it describes the
| shape of the plant vividly) is --- because there's delicious
| stuff there but also some of the more widespread umbillifers can
| straight up kill you.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Spotted water hemlock is the most toxic plant in North America_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22631069 - March 2020 (59
| comments)
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