3 minute read
Home & Garden
52 The West Dorset Magazine, July 29, 2022 Homes & Gardens x Horticulture...
Born and bred in West Dorset, Dave has worked in horticulture and botany locally and internationally, notably in Belgium, Jordan and the UAE. He brings a wealth of practical knowledge with its underlying principles to his writing The gloves are off when it comes to our
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During July and August, scaremongering stories emerge across the media about killer plants. The other weekend, a local news publication’s website published ‘Dangerous and potentially deadly animals and wildlife to watch out for in Dorset’. It was a generic article published across the news group’s publications with the word ‘Dorset’ in the headline replaced by summer or a different location name. While I understand this to be an economic response to providing informative copy it should at least be accurate… and informative. The article stated: ‘… the berries of foxgloves are particularly poisonous.’ Foxgloves are poisonous, but why specifically mention their berries when they have none! Mistakes like this can take you on a journey to scrutinise other parts of the article. I limited myself to the paragraph on foxgloves. Apparently, ‘foxgloves cause at least 190 urgent alerts to the National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) each year’, but what actually is an ‘urgent alert’? The article failed to explain and nor did the NPIS website, so without this information we are unable to conclude anything about poisonings from this plant, although I suspect it’s close to, or very probably, zero. The most recent information I found from the Office of National Statistics reveal a single human death in England and Wales during 2016 from accidental ingestion of an unnamed toxic plant. Compare this with 15 deaths on Dorset roads in that year and we gain perspective.
HAND IN GLOVE: Foxgloves are no more dangerous than many other plants
Plant of the week:
If you are travelling to a beach in the next few weeks look out for rock samphire, sometimes called sea fennel. This curious member of the carrot family is confined in the wild to coastal areas, especially rocky cliffs. Plants have succulent (fleshy) divided leaves that are grey in colour. When cut they are triangular in cross section. Flowers appear through summer and are characteristically arranged in an umbel, a trait typical for its family. Plants are edible, although fellow columnist John Wright describes its flavour in the Edible Seashore (River Cottage Handbook) as being something akin to ‘carrots and kerosene’.
Rock samphire Crithmum maritimum
...with botanist Dr Dave Aplin poisonous plants
Besides, if we were to make an inventory of poisonous plants around the home and garden the list would be long. One of our most poisonous plants freely inhabit rivers and damp ground, yet we hear nothing about cases of people being poisoned by them or other plants, why? Because humans don’t go indiscriminately munching handfuls of foliage and for that matter nor do pets. Naturally, mistakes can happen, but the risk is so infinitesimally small it shouldn’t preclude poisonous plants being grown in the garden or home. If we were to take this action then we would also need to get rid of step ladders, stairs and probably banana skins.
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