On Jul 16, 6:30*pm, "Christina Websell"
wrote:
"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message

...



"K" wrote in message
...

Ragwortis a native UK plant which is a primary food plant for the
cinnabar moth, listed on the UK Biodiversity Action Plan as rapidly
declining.

Ragwortis now classed as a noxious weed and there are legal consequences if
you don't pull it up. *It causes liver damage to horse and apparently to
children if they handle it.


This is an urban myth. Please do not spread this story. It is most
emphatically does NOT cause liver damage when handled.

See http://www.ragwortfacts.com/ragwort-humans.html for a technical
explanation
and
http://www.ragwortfacts.com/ragwort-...ng-humans.html for a
simpler one which illustrates why you should not spread this urban
myth.


Also see

http://www.ragwort.org/ragwort-law.html


* * In my childhood, everyragwortseemed to be crawling with handsome
stripey *cinnabar caterpillars and later we saw clouds of moths.
but I hadn't seen any caterpillars for years . Last week, weeding the
drive, I found a very stuntedragwortwith two tiny
cinnabar caterpillars on it. A couple of days later, no more had
appeared, and the two had almost exhausted their larder so I moved them
to a full-grownragwortplant
where they are gobbling and growing fast. I walked up the lane
inspecting everyragwortI could find, not one caterpillar. Dunno why;
there's no chemical spraying *here.

What luck to have them in my garden !

Don't tell the weed police!

Cinnabar caterpillars do preferragwortbut can also feed on grasses.

Tina

This link gives chapter and verse on the law. In short there is no
automatic legal requirement to control it.

http://www.ragwortfacts.com/ragwort-law.html

Cinnabar moth caterpillars DO NOT EAT GRASS.

Ragwort is poisonous to animals but research in the UK and
internationally shows that poisoning is very rare.

There is however an overreaction to this which leads to a lot of urban
myths several of which have been repeated in this thread.
Another good site to read on this is http://www.ragwort.jakobskruiskruid.com
which is the English language version of a Dutch horse owner's website
written in conjunction with a number of international experts.
The owner of the website was a member of a ragwort extermination group
until she asked for expert advice . She then discovered that the
overreaction which had spread from the UK was just that and wrote the
website to debunk the myths.

There is an interesting page on the panic and the value of the plant
to nature here.
http://www.buglife.org.uk/conservati...jects/ragwort/