BAC wrote:
"ex WGS Hamm" wrote in message
...

"Martin Brown" wrote in message
snip


Birds can more or less safely eat yew berries - there was a huge
tree in our hen pen and despite the toxicity it never seemed to
bother them.

Try eating them yourself, you will soon find out that what one
species can safely eat, isn't necessarily safe for another
species.



I hope that advice wasn't intended to be taken literally - although
the flesh of the yew berry is not toxic, the seeds are very toxic
indeed. If one were lucky, the seeds would pass through the system
without being ingested, but one would have to be crazy to try it,
IMO.

Slight modification called for here. The fleshy seed-cup _is_ toxic,
just not very much so. The HMSO poisonous plants book I mentioned
upthread says children have died after eating these "cups".

Mike.