Re: Datura or Brugmansia--Yes, very poisonous

CCWESTON@cs.com wrote:
Hello All:

I believe I may have posted once before about the poisonous properties of the Datura which grown in the desert around here. There was an incident several years ago where a group of teenagers went into the desert and brewed some "jungle juice" from datura roots.

Several died. One who drank very little managed to get back to civilization.

So, I think it is important to recognize the dangerous properties of this "sacred datura" even though I grow it as an ornamental plant.
The growing of poisonous plants in gardens is often debated and in many cases the risk seems to be acceptably low, but one certainly has to take each case on its merits. For instance,
(1)I would be very doubtful myself of growing the so-called winter cherry (Solanum capsicastrum) because its poisonous berries are attractive enough for many small children to be tempted by them. As it happens my family is all past the danger stage (our youngest grandson is twelve) and all my other regular visitors likewise, BUT the family next door has just brought home a new daughter and in a couple of years or so she might easily take to wandering and end up unnoticed in our garden..

(2)A quite different example would be the oleander. This would be even less likely than the Datura to cause danger to anyone just enjoying its presence as there is no particular reason why one would be moved to try eating any part of it*. However it has a nasty characteristic of producing a poisonous smoke if burnt, so the gardener must be careful in disposing of prunings.

(3)A third case would be the foxglove, which many people grow. but which is just as unlikely as the oleander to be eaten by anybody but which can safely be disposed of without special precautions. There are a considerable number of poisonous garden plants which come in this latter category and whose poisonous nature is known not by the trouble they cause, but simply because they have been analyzed by chemists in in relation to possible medicinal properties. (some have indeed also been deliberately used criminally as poisons, but that is quite another story)

So as far as I am concerned category (1) plants seem to me an unacceptable risk, while I would probably grow most category (2) happily and I never give any special thought to the third category. HOWEVER as those in the USA, NZ teenagers can be unpredictable and we had a case a few years ago which Clark's posting brought back to me, where a group of youngsters at Christchurch in South Island made themselves very sick by deliberately inhaling oleander smoke. I don't think any of the died but the details are hazy now. Certainly if they all survived it was more by luck than good management.

There seems to be no very good way of protecting lively and enquiring youngsters at that stage in their lives from every possibly lethal experience they can get themselves into.

* Apropos of trying to eat it, strangely I can vouch for the fact that it tastes vile, being extremely bitter. Where I was brought up in Kenya our garden had a huge bush of the double pink variety and at about the age of six or seven I was once moved to pick a bunch of the flowers for my mother. When I tried to snap the stems they defeated me with their fibrousness and so I proceeded to detach them with my teeth. In the process of biting them off I got a mouthful of the sap and spent some time vigorously spitting to get rid of the burning sensation. I suffered no other ill-effects!
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm

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