On Tue, 04 Feb 2003 16:11:38 GMT, Pam
wrote:

...I have gardened for years with both small
children and assorted pets and with all sorts of 'poisonous' plants - daphne,
sarcococca, yew, etc.- and have never encountered a problem.

The thing I find so distasteful about the "poisonous plant"
hysteria which surfaces from time to time -- in the UK as well as
in the PacNW, I'm sure -- is that it obscures the existence of
the few plants that are seriously poisonous. I used to think that
/Aconitum ferox/ sounded attractive, but then found out that it
was so poisonous that the director of Kew (or some equivalently
highly placed horticultural poobah) wouldn't have it in his
garden. Some Burmese tribesmen use(d) it for poisoning their
arrows...

I've lately had /Eurphorbia characias/ dug up and deported. It
was in an awkward spot and experience had showed me that I
couldn't work around it without getting the latex on me once in a
while.

--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada