Re: Hemlock and castor bean

> Tony Rodd wrote:
> 
> I had the impression that castor bean (or castor-oil plant as we know
> it here) is naturalised in just about all parts of the world with
> frost free (or almost) climate with hot summers. And hemlock likewise
> but in cooler, moister climates.
> 
> In my opinion the likelihood of either castor bean or hemlock
> poisoning the population at large is greatly overrated. Both have very
> acrid-tasting foliage which would make children spit with disgust as
> soon as they tasted them, and I doubt that the poisonous principle is
> present in very high concentration in the foliage. I seem to recall
> from the poison plants literature that livestock sometimes graze
> hemlock with no ill effects. And most cases of accidental poisoning
> from castor bean have arisen from chewing the seeds, which do contain
> a deadly poison in high concentration.
> 
> I am not trying to say that these plants are not deadly poisons when
> ingested in certain ways, just that there is no need for panic simply
> because they are present in your neighbourhood. 
> Public awareness rather than eradication is the more practical means
> of prevention of poisoning. That said, I have no love of either
> hemlock or castor bean, as both are unsightly and invasive weeds.

Tony

A few  comments on your posting -.

I originally came from East Africa where Castor oil plant is native and
occued generally around ourdistrict as a weed. In days gone by though it
may have been also deliberately planted by the local Africans, who up to
about the 1930s commonly used to anoint their skins with the oil in lieu
of bathing. 

My father bought a farm in the Nairobi district in 1926 from a recent
widow who had decided to return to her relatives in England. My parents
used to recount the tale of how a few years earlier a young man (their
nephew) had come from England for a holiday and for some mad reason
actually picked and ate some of the beans, which as might be expected
led to his death. It must have been  a dreadful shock for his family,
especially the ones who had invited his visit..

I would dispute though that castor oil plant is necessarily an unsightly
weed. Hereabouts, and I am sure elsewhere, there is a garden version
with magnificently crimson foliage which can look fabulous in bedding
schemes as an accent plant. I suppose it might escape into the wild, but
this can easly be avoided by pruning off the flowers.

Not allowing it to flower would also take away any chance of someone
emulating the young man in my tale and eating the beans. As far as I
have ever heard the foliage is not poisonous.

Conium (Hemlock) is also known here mainly as an occasional weed of
waste places. Only once or twice have I ever seen it as a weed in garden
and usually the owners were quite unaware of its poisonous nature but
happy to remove it once I warned them. It is a dull and unattractive
weed which I think and pretty unlikely to tempt anybody to nibble on it,
but would certainly have disastrous results if they should do so.

Another equally
> poisonous plant is oleander, which is a common garden shrub in
> Australia as well as southern California, but instances of poisoning
> are few and far between. Oleander also has extremely bitter foliage.
> Most of the historical accounts of fatal oleander poisoning implicate
> heat extraction from the stems, either from using the twigs to stir
> hot soups or beverages or as skewers to barbecue meat; smoke
> inhalation from burning branches has also been implicated, though I
> don't know if there have been fatalities from this.

Actually I can vouch from personal experience that oleander stems are
unpleasantly bitter, as when I was still a amall child I decided one day
to pick my mother a bouquet from the huge bush of the double pink
variety which graced our African garden. What I had not realized is that
they certainly don't snap off easily, but the stems are very fibrous and
hard to break. getting exasperated I finally resorted to chewing them
off and eventually accomplished  this successsfully, along with much
spitting out of the very bitter sap.

Well my mother got her bouquet and I never suffered any ill effects!

Oleanders are common enough in the parts of NZ which have mild winters
and while I have never heard of anybody else trying to bite through the
stems I _have_ come across mention of people suffering health problems
as a result of inhaling the smoke of burning wood. 

There was also a case some years ago, in Christchurch I think, of young
teenagers looking for a new thrill trying some deliberate oleander smoke
sniffing. I can't exactly remember the outcome, but there were certainly
some very sick young people and have an idea there _may_ have been some
fatalities on that occasion - definitely the wrong way of getting
"kicks" anyway.

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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