I have a bad habit of tasting plants, very small tastes and I always spit after tasting. Are there things out there poisonous enough to be dangerous from a very small taste. I have had my mouth get numb a number of times but so far have not suffered any bad effects, I always become paranoid after tasting and swear I will never do it again.
Um, yes, tasting plants is dangerous. We aren’t koalas. Even if they aren’t poisonous, there’s a chance there might be a trace amount of animal feces or random chemicals.
Just as long as you don’t bother with fungus etc.
Try not to chew belladonna fruits, maybe yew seeds too
Dieffenbachia could burn your oral mucosa a bit.
I experienced that with a very similar looking plant many years ago. Now I tend to crush things in my fingers and smell them for herb value, I always end up tasting my finger. Grasses are another thing I find myself wanting to chew on. Yesterday I saw something that appeared to be in the rosemary family, crushed it, smelled it and then tasted. It burned my mouth slightly and I had a very irritating taste in my mouth for an hour or so. I almost feel like it is some instinctual thing in humans and animals to taste.
I’d stay away from mushrooms and berries and beans, but a minute nibble of a leaf is unlikely to be a problem (at least in the US and Canada. I don’t claim to know anything about Asian and Australian plants. Australia’s nature seems pretty determined to kill humans, though…)
The nice thing about plant poisons is that they taste terrible, even at very low doses. They’re mostly alkaloids, which are bitter. Of course, some benign plants are bitter, too. But it doesn’t really matter if you spit out something that wouldn’t have hurt you.
I can’t think of any plant that tastes good that will kill you in a tiny dose. Neither can these guys.
Of course, a little nibble-and-spit like you describe is a different thing from making a tossed salad of wild plants you don’t know. There are certainly plants that will make you ill or even kill you, but you’d have to eat more than a single leaf fragment.
Stay away from the beans, berries and mushrooms, though. Some of those are deadly at shockingly low doses.
And also be aware of skin exposure while you’re exploring. There are some plants - datura, nettles - which will do you more harm brushing large exposed areas of your skin than ingesting a tiny nibble.
Other people shouldn’t copy you … they may become sensitised to the plant, you may become anaphalactic style allergic…
But you’ve tested that this doesn’t happen to you it seems, but what could happen…
Well you keep increasing then number of plants, so it may be that someday you hit the plant that you do become allergic to.
(My worry is that you get far more of the plant juice by tasting it than by getting it on your skin.)
First time for the plant, get a numb tongue.
Second time for the plant, go into anaphalaxis.
No. First time for the plant, get a tingling, itchy swollen tongue and mouth, then *perhaps *second time anaphylaxsis.
But what **HoneyBadgerDC **is describing is not the allergic response, but the perfectly normal response to amides and alkylamides in many plants. Echinacea makes your tongue numb. Spilanthes makes your tongue numb AND makes you drool streams of saliva like a mad dog (it’s a great flower to prank your friends with!) Clove buds make your tongue numb, and to a lesser extent, so will the leaves and bark. All perfectly harmless.
People seem far more likely to develop allergies to things they consume a lot of regularly than to things they consume small bits of once in a while. Different countries (or regions within a country) with different diets show about the same rate of allergies, but to different things. It’s likely to be the staples in that area’s diet that people are most commonly allergic to - rice allergies are far more common in Asia than the US, while sesame allergies are huge in Israel.
I thought there were some common ornamentals that are deadly in surprisingly small doses - azalea and oleander come to mind. Is that just for children?
Azalea will make you sick if you eat quite a bit of the flowers (10 flowers made a 76 year old man ill), but there are no deaths in modern medical reports. There are some deaths talked about in historical documents, but we don’t know how much they consumed or what sort of medical care they received. If they were purged and bled to treat the condition, it may not have been the azaleas that killed them. Most azalea poisoning comes from eating honey that was collected from bees that visited azalea plants. You feel like crap, and if you have a heart condition or severe symptoms, they will hospitalize you and provide supportive care, but it’s unlikely to kill you - certainly a little leaf nibble won’t.
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+3463
The dangers of oleander are likewise overblown, although a little greater than azalea. Apparently, even people intentionally consuming oleander to commit suicide often fail at dying from it. I don’t have a subscription to get behind the paywall where the whole study is located.
European water hemlock (Cicuta virosa) reportedly tastes good*, like parsley, and is also the deadliest plant in all of Northern Europe. The most dangerous part of the plant is the root, but all parts contain cicutoxin, a deadly poison to mammals. Even hemlock roots and parts of them often float around, no need to dig 'em up. Children have died from shockingly small amounts of water hemlock, and a single root can kill a grown man, or a feeding cow (animals get fooled, as well). The plant was traditionally used as a “suicide pill” by some Boreal peoples. Caution adviced, even with a tiny dose.
- The article WhyNot linked mentioned American species of Cicuta spp. and claimed they taste “wrong”. Wouldn’t count on it.
This is incorrect. Mycologists routinely taste fungi as part of the identification criteria - even the most deadly species can be tasted and spat out safely.
I don’t recommend it personally though (and in all honesty, it’s probably not often necessary).
Somewhere between raw carrots and parsley. I stupidly ate some as young teenager, thinking it was water parsnip (Sium spp). I honestly don’t know how I survived this without even being ill.
Ick, I think it tastes pretty awful. Not gentian awful, but “did I just eat a dirty slug?” awful. It definitely makes me want to spit it out and rinse my mouth.
But regardless, again for an adult who is tasting and then spitting out a portion of a leaf, not likely to kill you.
I can find no toxicity level listed specifically for Cicuta virosa (although it’s definitely toxic, as all Cicuta are.) But here are some of the Cicuta mentioned by species at Toxnet:
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+3472
Stay away from roots and berries until you are certain of your plant ID skills.
Mangetout, if you ate “some of the root,” as a kid without getting ill, it’s more likely you were eating Daucus carota, no? That tastes exactly like “somewhere between raw carrots and parsley.” Maud Grieve describes the flavor of water hemlock root as “acrid.” Obviously, I’ve never tasted the root myself.
I really don’t see how this can be considered anything but a foolish habit.
Well, none of us would be here if someone hadn’t done it. Humans didn’t always have supermarkets, or even farms. We were hunters and gatherers first, and gathering means figuring out what you can gather and what you shouldn’t.
We’ve become so far removed from nature that nature’s become scary. That’s ignorance, and that’s what we’re fighting here, no? The truth is that there just aren’t many (I won’t say aren’t any, because I don’t know that for sure) plants that are deadly with a little leaf nibble. The most poisonous plants I know of have mostly been brought up here, and it turns out their leaves are not actually as deadly as most of us think. Or maybe humans are hardier than we think.
Datura is about the most toxic leaf I can think of, in terms of needing only a very low dose for it to have a serious negative effect. And it’s a common ornamental! Stupid teenagers have died eating or smoking it to get high. And that’s one that I mentioned you want to be careful you don’t get all over your skin, because you don’t even have to eat it to trip from it. My first herbal teacher once did a very stupid thing, pruning her datura plant without gloves. She tripped hard (and unpleasantly) for many hours, and probably should have been in the hospital on a cardiac monitor. I’m not at all saying that all plants are safe. Some plants want to fuck you up. But answering the question in the OP: does a small leaf nibble - and then spitting out the leaf if it’s unpleasant - present a grave risk? No, it does not.
We wouldn’t have cars, either, if someone hadn’t invented the wheel. It’s been done, though, and we don’t go around pretending like it needs to be reinvented. Does anybody honestly believe that the OP is “fighting ignorance” in any way that matters? There is nothing to indicate that he is doing this in a systematic way or keeping any kind of records or passing along such “knowledge” as he does accrue to others. I doubt he’ll die from it, but he risks sickening himself for no gain.
No, no, I’m fighting *your *ignorance, thinking that this is a very dangerous activity. It isn’t. Does it have risks? Sure. (As does driving that car of yours; cars kill more people than wild plant eating.) But if you limit yourself to leaves and a small amount, the riskiest part of your afternoon will be sunburn or bee stings.
It may not matter at all to you. I don’t care. Some of us find it fulfilling, relaxing and educational to go walking and see what plants taste like. I’m sure I’d find your hobbies just as baffling - and probably more dangerous.
Some more notoriously toxic plants that havn’t been brought up yet:
Poke: a few raw leaves will give you belly cramps and make you throw up. A big bowl of raw leaves might kill you. Always cook poke first. “Poke salad” is a misspeaking. It’s “poke sallet,” and sallet means cooked greens.
Rhubarb: half a leaf or so will give you digestive upset and a burnt esophagus. Several leaves, liver or kidney failure. The stems, as we all know, are delicious with strawberries and sugar.
Foxglove: yes, technically fatal, in large doses. I wouldn’t make a habit of eating it, but a little nibble isn’t going to kill a healthy adult. Might make your heart race for a few minutes, though.
Monkshood/aconite: Ouch. Yeah, this one…this one a tiny nibble might actually kill you. Or rather, about 2mg, which is maybe a half teaspoon? Rumor has it that a single flower is enough to kill. This one is really potent and really bad. Don’t nibble monkshood. Learn what it looks like, and don’t eat anything that looks like it.
Correct your own ignorance. I never said it was ''very dangerous." I said it was a foolish habit. If you find it fulfilling, then continue doing it, by all means. People smoke, too.
WhyNot, I’ve enjoyed reading what you’ve shared in this thread (and others), but, for me hold the sugar and berries. My rhubarb is chopped steams simmered in a few Tb of water. Mmmmmmmmm!