For Release August 22, 2004

Please Don't Eat That!

AGRI-VIEWS
by Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent

For some reason, there is a segment of the population that is intrigued with eating "natural" foods. I've never known what an unnatural food is. Maybe grubs and crickets, but I digress. By natural foods I don't mean organically produced, which I can understand. Perhaps rather than natural I should say uncultivated foods. Case in point would be wild plums or elderberries.

But I've had way too many conversations with people that quite frankly scare the heck out of me! Take the individual who walked in my office recently with part of a plant that had green and black berries on it. The question was something like, "What are these berries? They kind of have a sweet taste to them." I asked the individual to please not eat any more of these berries. The plant was black nightshade. You may recognize the name nightshade as being a poisonous plant. And therein, as Shakespeare would say, lies the rub!

It is very difficult to say, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what plants are poisonous and what ones aren't. I can go through my books and find conflicting data. "Foliage and green berries are suspect, however the mature fruits are supposed to be edible." That's encouraging. Another source indicates the same thing, but also describes a couple of very similar looking and closely related species and describes them as being toxic. And if we're talking about nightshade it's hard not to talk about the most famous nightshade family member, the tomato.

One of the persistent problems in dealing with research on poisonous plants is that it is hard to find volunteers willing to sample potentially posionous plants. We have to go with second hand information or anecdotal information. "Before Jimmy got sick I think he was eating this plant." For years we thought that poinsettias were poisonous and then finally somebody ate a couple of them to prove that they weren't. There were not very tasty, but they also weren't poisonous. Those kind of volunteers are hard to come by, and some don't last very long!

There are a lot of poisonous plants that grow naturally. There are also plants that we grow on purpose that can have some sickening, if not lethal, properties. Rhubarb leaf stalks are a personal favorite of mine, but rhubarb leaves are toxic. Castor bean plants are beautiful, but don't eat the seeds! Hemlock, what supposedly killed Socrates, is a common plant in our area. People eat it by accident because it looks like wild carrots or wild parsnips. Now there's a fatal mistake!

I've had four different plant species, all with some kind of purple berries, brought in to me to confirm that it was elderberry. Only one of those was elderberry. One was mildly poisonous, one was maybe poisonous and the other was Raccoon Grape, not poisonous but not edible. I'll just mention in passing the whole food allergy issue. You may try something that technically isn't poisonous, but if you are allergic to it, it can be just as fatal as eating a deadly mushroom.

The bottom line is this. If you don't know what it is for sure, don't eat it. If you THINK you know what it is, don't eat it. You may think your way into the emergency room! If you have to know, bring a good size sample of the plant and berry to my office. Sure it's fun to eat something growing wild. But don't risk your health and life on an uncertain plant identification!

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