Re: Castor Beans and poison hemlock

Doobieous wrote:
> 
> --- Diane Whitehead <voltaire@islandnet.com> wrote:
> 
> > a very long time.  Do any of you or your municipal
> > governments make
> > an effort to kill it?
> 
> I haven't seen or heard anything about it. It's so
> ubiquitous around here that any freshwater area is
> generally garaunteed to have it. I HATE the smell of
> the flowers. It's this cloyingly sweet nutty smell
> that nauseates me. One would think the toxicity of it
> and the fact it superficially looks like fennel would
> be reason enough that the Elkhorn Slough visitors
> center area would kill it, but i remember walking
> along a pathway that was densely lined with the stuff.
> Easy reach for a child to grab a leaf or stem and suck
> on it.
> 
> Barry Garcia
> USDA: 9
> Sunset: 17
> Marina, CA
>  I agree that the public need prtotecting from themselves, here we have a notice up at the entrance to the nursery warning parents  that their children should not be allowed to touch any plant under any circumstances whatever, but still the more idiotic encourage their children to nibble leaves at random.The current thinking of our County School Grounds Committee is that if children are not exposed to toxic plants in a controlled environment, they will never learn what they can and can not eat. In fact far from chewing any leaf they happen to be passing in this largely urban area, the pendulum has swung too far the other way and kids won't eat anything green unless it comes in a plastic bag, and then only under coercion. Education is better than attempts at wholesale extermination as one plant inevitably slips through the net with potentially fatal consequences. There are also environmental considerations, I was at a conference at Kew several years ago when a couple of loo!
ny academics stood up and advocated the extermination of all plants toxic to humans regardless of the fact that many were the food plants of endangered caterpillars. They were slapped down but this did not deter a national trade organisation attempting ban the sale of Aristolochia shortly afterwards on the grounds that some foolish women had mistakenly used it as a slimming aid and suffered incurable kidney damage as a result. We continue to sell A clematitis as a food plant for festoon caterpillars. Education and protection are the obvious course, but governmental organisations can be relied upon to over-react with unforeseen results

Anthony
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