• Question: Out of 100 how dangerous do you think it is to eat or touch some of the dangerous plants?

    Asked by elicockrel69 to Debbie, Glyn, Jon, Kat, Nicola on 11 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Debbie Crockard

      Debbie Crockard answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I’d go with 80 – most will have some sort of treatment now adays but why touch them if you know they’re dangerous?

      But then again this guy lets different insects sting him and gives them a pain rating out from 0-4 so I suppose its not that strange 🙂

      http://io9.com/5836024/after-150-different-insect-stings-an-entomologist-becomes-a-connoisseur-of-pain

    • Photo: Jonathan Stone

      Jonathan Stone answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I’m not the person to ask about this…I don’t know very much about plants!!

    • Photo: Glyn Barrett

      Glyn Barrett answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      Hmmm very interesting and difficult to answer as giving danger a scale is hard. So lets say the most dangerous thing at 100% to eat or touch is the box jellyfish (http://library.thinkquest.org/C007974/2_1box.htm) and 0% would be like a slice of bread then I would say the dangerous plants should be in the 60 to 70% percent range.

      lots of plants produce poisonous substances called toxins which can harm you if you eat them but other plants make up things like sharp spines (for example a cactus) which can be really dangerous if you poke your eye on them.

    • Photo: Kathryn McMahon

      Kathryn McMahon answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      Hmm, I’ll try to answer this, as I have spent a small part of my career working with plants – I’m no expert though!
      I think for touching, plants are more likely to make you itch and scratch rather than kill you, so I’d probably only give them a 40 for that. The worst example I can find is the New Zealand Nettle tree, which sounds pretty painful, but only one person died from it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urtica_ferox.

      For eating, I’d give them 100. Some plants will easily kill you if you eat them. There are several deadly plants in England, for example – deadly nightshade, henbane and hemlock. Hemlock was used as a poison to kill people in ancient greece and henbane was used in a famous victorian murder case.
      There are even some plants that produce teratogens. These are poisons that won’t kill you, but if you’re pregnant, and you eat them, they will affect the way your unborn baby grows (definitely not good!). A good example of this is the corn lilly in America. Farmers noticed that when sheep and cows grazed in fields where they grew, the lambs and calves they produced didn’t live very long and often had one single eye, like a cyclops. Scientists pinned it down to a toxin the corn lily produced, that interfered with the way the brain of the unborn lambs grew in the womb. Very nasty! Plants definitely deserve a 100 in this instance.

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