Having seen Hunger Games last night, I wondered. They refer to nightlock berries which can kill you in a minute. This is a common enough trope in fiction, but is it necessarily true in real life? I know there are berries in the wild which can make you quite sick and kill you if you don’t get treatment, indeed it was a big problem in the Burma campaign for British soldiers. But, slightly bad milk can kill you if you are unlucky enough. Are there really berries which are, eat and be dead a few minutes later? Allergy attacks don’t count.
I immediately thought of the Castor bean of oil fame, which obviously isn’t a berry, but it turns out it’s not quite as bad as I had thought.
Also not a culinary berry but bitter almonds have a lethal dose which can be as low as a dozen. Since it kills by the release of cyanide, death would be pretty quick. According to the master,
In any event they also had hallucinogenic wasp stings and pit bull/mastiff hybrids the size of bears, so I could see there being some “gotcha” plants put there on purpose.
ETA: I didn’t catch it but did they name the berries in question?
Yes, when Katniss comes back to find the berries lying on a coat. It’s also in the OP.
Not a berry per se. But there’s always Cerbera odollam, commonly known as the Suicide tree.
The kernels contain cerberin, a potent alkaloid toxin related to digoxin, a poison found in foxglove.
No mention about how fast or how much is required, but I get the impression the dosage is extremely low.
Nightlock, nightlock, nightlock.
So, a hybrid cross between Deadly Nightshade and Hemlock.
Some fungi are poisonous enough that half of one cap would kill you, without medical intervention, up to and including a liver transplant. But it will take a week or two of jaundiced agony.
Si
Cecil has mentioned how to try to avoid the pitfall: How to identify poisonous plants
In terms of speed of results, he’s also covered What the fastest acting, most lethal poison?
I saw Death Berry open for Sisters of Mercy the other week.