Spotted water hemlock is the most toxic plant in North America
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
Anyway we're having a good old time and this guy i know that's the ditch supervisor for the county comes down the road and slows to a stop. I'm like 'hey man what's up?' and he said 'uh..not much. you realize that's hemlock don't you?' 'Hmmm?' 'Yeah that's poisonous plant, it's a neurotoxin, better go home and wash off. If anybody starts feeling funny call 911.'.
And that's how i learned what hemlock looks like!
But poison hemlock is all over the place, and while less toxic it's still quite deadly.
The real problem with hemlock is Angelica. I had eaten wild Angelica and I'm not tempted to repeat the experience unless absolutely necessary. Oenanthe is a pretty evil masterpiece also (but a very satisfactory garden plant). The three can grow interwined in the same area and are roughly similar.
And the other problem with hemlock is lawnmowing fever. You can find yourself in a lot of trouble if you start casually shredding plants in a riverbank.
Talking in aesthetic terms, Hemlock is a very delicate and nice plant showing a beautiful hue of pink in fall color.
In any case, pound by pound, the worst villain in terms of number of casualties is Nicotiana. No doubt about it.
Wait, coriander and cilantro are just names for the same plant. It's like saying roast them with parsley and top it with some chopped parsley.
Not trying to justify that practice, just explaining.
I will. Seeds and the leaves serve very different purposes and tastes and so having different words is great :}
My speculation is that cilantro/coriander leaves entered the American mainstream via their use in Mexican food, which is why the Spanish word stuck when it comes to the leaves. But I could be wrong.
And Coriander is from Old French https://www.etymonline.com/word/coriander?ref=etymonline_cro... traced all the way back to
> from Greek koriannon, often said by botanists to be related to koris "bedbug" from the bad smell of the unripe fruit, or perhaps it is a non-Indo-European word conformed to the Greek insect name.
I also have the soap gene and avoid cilantro. A friend told me he heard that if you harvest the cilantro before it flowers, then whatever causes the soapiness is not there. He had some that he’d gotten from a co-op, I skeptically tried a bit, and I’ll be damned! It’s true!
This obviously won’t help you at the grocery store or at restaurants, but if you want to know why most people rave about it, track some down. It’s quite tasty.
> It’s the deadliest plant in North America, deadlier ounce by ounce than any mushroom
Mushrooming is a curious hobby. Common advice is "it's okay to bite/taste any mushroom"... but you're never to swallow until you've got a positive identification, and never ever while you're out in the field even if you think you're sure.
But plants are wicked dangerous by comparison, which really bucks common perceptions about plant/mushroom foraging. For example, simply touching wolfsbane can kill!
The plant is featured in Harry Potter in the very first book, but it completely understates the actual danger of the plant. At least based on your link, and how even touching it can be fatal.
For those wondering, it's the first potion class in book 1.
That is very bad advice if you ever come to Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_virosa
Even one of this mushroom will basically put your liver into necrosis and slowly kill you. There is no effective remedy in modern medicine apart from emergency liver transplant.
It also looks much like the common and delicious champignon.
But even with pictures, good guidebook and caution, experts still advice against picking white edible mushrooms at all. The risk of accidentally picking a destroying angel is not worth it, as any forest that has e.g. champignons (Agaricus) is going to have other good, non-white mushrooms as well.
Us kids looked at them in horror. However they already knew most of the poisonous species and never touched those. The “bite test” was to tell between just a few species. It was still scary to see.
So wait, pretty much the one thing that can't kill you in NetHack is actually incredibly toxic IRL? DevTeam!!
Thankfully, once you know what to look for, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Hopefully. There's been a big uptick in interest in elderberry due to coronavirus, so we'll see how good people are at telling the difference in a few months.
Why? Simply because it'll cause you to "chew your tongue into ribbons" and "muscles start contracting so hard they can dislocate bones"?
Pussy.
Just watch for not shallowing accidentally any part of the plant, and wash your hands later from removing pollen traces
This is part of the problem with the plant. Zero warnings in a beautiful delicate wild flower. Wolfsbane is worse in that sense.
From Wikipedia
My bet would be that they mistoken it for something edible/medicinal and tried to make an antimosquito recipe. Children always take a quick bit of anything that their parents show them as interesting.
"Probably" should not inspire you to try it, but should encourage you to get help as quickly as possible, and not just assume it would be futile.
The interesting difference of this plant, vs many other toxics, is that it doesn't taste or smell bad.
> Every single muscle starts firing and contracting, so you have convulsions, you chew your tongue into ribbons, you vomit but then you can’t open your mouth because the jaw muscles are contracting 10 or 20 times as hard as they normally do, and you die a horrible death.
> Those who eat it will die in two hours. It must be a painful death. It twists the arms and ankles and turns the head back. Finally they die in a last wretching convulsion. They say it turns the eyes back.
> Cicutoxin is a GABA antagonist; it turns off the brakes. Without that... the brain goes nuts: Everything starts firing. Anyone unfortunate enough to ingest cicutoxin starts sweating, vomiting, and salivating violently. Kidney failure is common, as is an irregular heartbeat and difficulty breathing. Muscles start contracting so hard they can dislocate bones.
To make the matters worse, anti-toxins may or may not work.
"Spotted water hemlock grows in freshwater marshy or swampy areas throughout the entire continent of North America, save the island of Newfoundland. It can be found in Alaska and Florida, in the vast unpopulated stretches of the American west and in the parks of New York City. It is not especially common, but its range is massive."
And before you respond, refer to: https://www.xkcd.com/386/