Unless they make a habit of eating plants they don't recognize, they're unlikely to have a problem. Putting poisonous things (eg potato tops, daffodil bulbs) on the compost heap doesn't transfer the poison to to crop plants that are grown with that compost.

Datura stramonium is pretty poisonous, but so are a lot of plants that we deliberately grow in our gardens. I'd be pretty miffed if I found my council tax were to be spent on a vain attempt to rid someone's garden of poisonous plants.

wrote in message
...
On 16 Sep, 23:06, "Spamlet" wrote:
"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in
...

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of wild
plants
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all over the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a wild plant
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in the town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris


Datura is a common casual plant and often turns up after ditch cleaning or
putting in pipes along roadsides etc. It is not very poisonous compared
with some other garden plants such as Delphiniums (used for arrow poisons)
and Monks'hood. The latter I was once amazed to find a market stall flower
seller, in Bishop's Stortford, selling in bunches, cutting the stalk bases
with a knife and bare hands. She had been selling them all day: from the
poison books she should have rapidly lost the use of her arms! She just
smiled and carried on, when I told her.

http://www.searchnbn.net/gridMap/gri...NSYS0000004044

One plant to be careful of if hemlock water-dropwort, whose leaves do look
rather like flat leaved parsley, and are very poisonous.

S

"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 02:20:50 +0100, said:

On 16 Sep, 23:06, "Spamlet" wrote:
"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in
messagenew
...

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of wild
pla
nts
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all over
the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a wild
plan
t
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in the
town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris

It doesn't specify the means of ingesting the poison but according to a
page on the RHS, between 1962 and 1978, only 2 people died from plant
poisoning in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. I assume figures
aren't available since then or that they stand at zero! If you go to the
RHS site there is a list of potentially harmful plants, categorised by
their degree of toxicity. If you read that and avoided every one of them,
you'd give up gardening. ;-) Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if eaten
and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would come into
the 'deadly' category if there was one!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

They could not have been looking very hard: I would imagine that millions of
people died from tobacco in that period.

Incidentally, one of the more common 'deadly' poisons contained in our
plants is hyocyamine: which you can buy in purified form over the counter in
any supermarket as 'Buscopan'. I use it all too often, and it is not all
that effective for curing stomach cramps either... Probably easier to use
that way than as the less common 'henbane', which stinks, though.

S

"mogga" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 16 Sep 2010 19:20:43 +0100, "David WE Roberts"
wrote:

In my back garden the 'soldiers' grown from last year's fallen tomatoes
are
starting to ripen fruit.

From this I presume that they in turn could drop fruit to provide seed for
next year.

So what is there to stop tomatoes becoming naturalised in the UK?
I assume that the current climate is conducive to outdoor tomatoes and the
last winter was certainly pretty harsh.

The weather mainly.

Had seedling tomatoes appear in the greenhouse on the allotment last
year that I hadn't planted so I'd assumed they'd grown from some old
tomatoes that had rotted before I got the plot.

Tomatoes come up wherever we spread compost. As do squashes of all sorts,
the odd mango, and avocado. The problem with the first two - as indeed with
our runner beans: perennials which last for years and years - is that they
tend to get going too late to produce a crop in the majority of years. They
have done so a few times lately though - and once I even picked fresh runner
beans for Christmas dinner. Incidentally, a pomegranate in a pot and a
loquat in the ground made it through the last snowy winter fine - except I
still havent got round to pinning the loquat branches back from where the
weight of snow pulled them off the wall. By comparison, a 'hardy'
cotoneaster in a pot in the same location was killed by the cold.

S




Although I haven't seen tomatoes growing as weeds in mediteranean areas.

Cheers

Dave R
--
http://www.bra-and-pants.com
http://www.holidayunder100.co.uk

On 18/09/2010 20:23, Spamlet wrote:
wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 02:20:50 +0100, said:

On 16 Sep, 23:06, wrote:
"Stewart Robert wrote in
messagenew
...

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of wild
pla
nts
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all over
the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a wild
plan
t
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in the
town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris

It doesn't specify the means of ingesting the poison but according to a
page on the RHS, between 1962 and 1978, only 2 people died from plant
poisoning in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. I assume figures
aren't available since then or that they stand at zero! If you go to the
RHS site there is a list of potentially harmful plants, categorised by
their degree of toxicity. If you read that and avoided every one of them,
you'd give up gardening. ;-) Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if eaten
and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would come into
the 'deadly' category if there was one!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

They could not have been looking very hard: I would imagine that millions of
people died from tobacco in that period.

Incidentally, one of the more common 'deadly' poisons contained in our
plants is hyocyamine: which you can buy in purified form over the counter in
any supermarket as 'Buscopan'.

Not quite - Buscopan contains Hyoscine, not Hyoscyamine.

--

Jeff

"Jeff Layman" wrote in message
...
On 18/09/2010 20:23, Spamlet wrote:
wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 02:20:50 +0100, said:

On 16 Sep, 23:06, wrote:
"Stewart Robert wrote in
messagenew
...

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of wild
pla
nts
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all over
the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a wild
plan
t
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in the
town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris

It doesn't specify the means of ingesting the poison but according to a
page on the RHS, between 1962 and 1978, only 2 people died from plant
poisoning in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. I assume figures
aren't available since then or that they stand at zero! If you go to
the
RHS site there is a list of potentially harmful plants, categorised by
their degree of toxicity. If you read that and avoided every one of
them,
you'd give up gardening. ;-) Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if eaten
and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would come into
the 'deadly' category if there was one!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

They could not have been looking very hard: I would imagine that millions
of
people died from tobacco in that period.

Incidentally, one of the more common 'deadly' poisons contained in our
plants is hyocyamine: which you can buy in purified form over the counter
in
any supermarket as 'Buscopan'.

Not quite - Buscopan contains Hyoscine, not Hyoscyamine.

Jeff

Well if you are going to nit pick:

Brand names for hyoscyamine include Symax, HyoMax, Anaspaz, Buwecon,
Cystospaz, Levsin, Levbid, Levsinex, Donnamar, NuLev, Spacol T/S, Buscopan
(containing the derivative hyoscine-N-butylbromide), Hyospasmol (also
hyoscine-N-butylbromide) and Neoquess"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyoscyamine

Derivatives often just being efforts to make you pay for patented branded
products.

S.

That's uncharacteristically curmudgeonly! You're usually as tolerant of thread drift as the rest of us!

"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 20:23:24 +0100, "Spamlet"
said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 02:20:50 +0100, said:

On 16 Sep, 23:06, "Spamlet" wrote:
"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in
messagenew
...

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of wild
pla
nts
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all over
the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a wild
plan
t
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in the
town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris

It doesn't specify the means of ingesting the poison but according to a
page on the RHS, between 1962 and 1978, only 2 people died from plant
poisoning in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. I assume figures
aren't available since then or that they stand at zero! If you go to
the
RHS site there is a list of potentially harmful plants, categorised by
their degree of toxicity. If you read that and avoided every one of
them,
you'd give up gardening. ;-) Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if eaten
and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would come into
the 'deadly' category if there was one!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

They could not have been looking very hard: I would imagine that millions
of
people died from tobacco in that period.

Incidentally, one of the more common 'deadly' poisons contained in our
plants is hyocyamine: which you can buy in purified form over the counter
in
any supermarket as 'Buscopan'. I use it all too often, and it is not all
that effective for curing stomach cramps either... Probably easier to
use
that way than as the less common 'henbane', which stinks, though.

S

Is this supposed to be a serious answer to people concerned with the
toxicity of garden plants? If so, "don't give up the day job" does spring
to mind.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

Well who rattled your cage?

Ignorance is the biggest danger and you seem to have it in spades. So if
you run a garden centre please do give up the day job and stop dangerously
misleading people with spurious statistics. Just like the florist I
mentioned cutting up monkshood bunches with a knife and bare hands: "I'm
not dead so it must be alright." being hers, yours and the RHS attitude.
Misleading people with spurious statistics is dangerous and the RHS ought to
know better. (For a beginner's guide in how to mislead with statistics: try
'The Tiger That Isn't' - which is getting 'must read'; reviews though its
content is obvious.) In a recent Guardian piece you will learn that the
journalists who 'didn't die' from 'mushroom' poisoning from the cortinarius
mushrooms they ate are still waiting kidney transplants a couple of years
later. They didn't die though, so the fungi must be safe after all, of
course.

But then garden centres are renowned for ignorance, so I suppose it's only
to be expected. I once bought 'coriander' from a garden centre, that turned
out to be caraway: it could equally easily have turned out to be hemlock for
all they knew or cared.

Any gardener wanting to know about the toxicity of any plant just needs to
do a few google clicks to find out: there is no excuse for ignorance
nowadays - and yet gardens everwhere are jam packed with deadly plants they
take for granted, that are sold to them by garden centres with no warnings.
Our countryside is also being wrecked by many invasive species -
particularly aquatics - sold entirely irresponsibly by garden centres
everywhere; just as is peat, and was limestone pavement.

Gardens everywhere are packed with opium poppies too: why is no-one ever
arrested for this, while raids on cannabis growers are legion? Why is
cannabis illegal but the related hop oil added to much of our beer? I don't
mind, as both hops and opium can come in handy from time to time.
Thankfully, now we have the internet, we can find out the truth for
ourselves without having to spend weeks in libraries and scouring secondhand
bookshops for information.

Datura as 'Angels Trumpets' was once a popular student drug, but also some
forms have amazing huge flowers - sold with no warnings by garden centres.
Yet on the other hand: once attending a Suffolk Wildlife Trust lecture (by
Clive Stace as it happens) I found a death cap growing among edible russulas
under trees around the school cricket pitch of the venue. I brought it in
to show to and warn the headmaster about: but nobody was interested.

This blase ignorance over plant safety is truly mind boggling, and it is
only the reluctance of the typical Brit to eat anything of a vegetable
nature, and very little that doesn't come from a supermarket, that keeps
your RHS figures - of actual deaths - so low.

This does not bode well for life in Britain post oil: many starving people
will undoubtedly die from eating poisonous plants they have proudly
maintained their ignorance of while times are good.

Bit not: the bemused Asian community in Luton when the council stuck 'do not
eat the watercress' signs all down the Lea, where they had been gathering it
for years. (And don't tell me about fluke: there aren't any sheep or cattle
in Luton.)

So until you learn how to present statistics without misleading people,
please stop quoting them.
And kindly reserve your spiteful comments for the more troll laden
newsgroups in future.

S

Spamlet wrote:
[...]

Succinct updating of information is one thing; a long-winded ego trip is
another.

--
Mike.

"Mike Lyle" wrote in message
...
Spamlet wrote:
[...]

Succinct updating of information is one thing; a long-winded ego trip is
another.

--
Mike.

So is sniping at newcomers to your apparently private little news group.

Succinct updating I am all for: having a newsgroup monopolised by a
commercial enterprise without it being immediately highlighted as spam by
the other users is quite unusual in my experience.

S

"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-19 19:34:08 +0100, "Spamlet"
said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 20:23:24 +0100, "Spamlet"
said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 02:20:50 +0100, said:

On 16 Sep, 23:06, "Spamlet" wrote:
"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in
messagenew
...

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of
wild
pla
nts
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all
over
the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a wild
plan
t
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in the
town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to
be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris

It doesn't specify the means of ingesting the poison but according to
a
page on the RHS, between 1962 and 1978, only 2 people died from plant
poisoning in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. I assume figures
aren't available since then or that they stand at zero! If you go to
the
RHS site there is a list of potentially harmful plants, categorised by
their degree of toxicity. If you read that and avoided every one of
them,
you'd give up gardening. ;-) Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if
eaten
and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would come
into
the 'deadly' category if there was one!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

They could not have been looking very hard: I would imagine that
millions
of
people died from tobacco in that period.

Incidentally, one of the more common 'deadly' poisons contained in our
plants is hyocyamine: which you can buy in purified form over the
counter
in
any supermarket as 'Buscopan'. I use it all too often, and it is not
all
that effective for curing stomach cramps either... Probably easier to
use
that way than as the less common 'henbane', which stinks, though.

S

Is this supposed to be a serious answer to people concerned with the
toxicity of garden plants? If so, "don't give up the day job" does
spring
to mind.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

Well who rattled your cage?

Ignorance is the biggest danger and you seem to have it in spades. So if
you run a garden centre please snip

We don't run a garden centre. And serious questions deserve a proper
answer, not a flippant reference to the uses of tobacco.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-19 19:34:08 +0100, "Spamlet"
said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 20:23:24 +0100, "Spamlet"
said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 02:20:50 +0100, said:

On 16 Sep, 23:06, "Spamlet" wrote:
"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in
messagenew
...

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of
wild
pla
nts
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all
over
the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a wild
plan
t
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in the
town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet (datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to
be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris

It doesn't specify the means of ingesting the poison but according to
a
page on the RHS, between 1962 and 1978, only 2 people died from plant
poisoning in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. I assume figures
aren't available since then or that they stand at zero! If you go to
the
RHS site there is a list of potentially harmful plants, categorised by
their degree of toxicity. If you read that and avoided every one of
them,
you'd give up gardening. ;-) Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if
eaten
and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would come
into
the 'deadly' category if there was one!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

They could not have been looking very hard: I would imagine that
millions
of
people died from tobacco in that period.

Incidentally, one of the more common 'deadly' poisons contained in our
plants is hyocyamine: which you can buy in purified form over the
counter
in
any supermarket as 'Buscopan'. I use it all too often, and it is not
all
that effective for curing stomach cramps either... Probably easier to
use
that way than as the less common 'henbane', which stinks, though.

S

Is this supposed to be a serious answer to people concerned with the
toxicity of garden plants? If so, "don't give up the day job" does
spring
to mind.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

Well who rattled your cage?

Ignorance is the biggest danger and you seem to have it in spades. So if
you run a garden centre please snip

We don't run a garden centre. And serious questions deserve a proper
answer, not a flippant reference to the uses of tobacco.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

I don't know why I'm bothering with your continued ignorant trollishness:
something which I've encountered in scarcely any other group over a number
of years. But if you think that my genuine statistical remark about a plant
that kills millions of people is flippan't compared to your ridiculous
assertion that because 'only 2 people' have been killed by garden plants a
number of years ago, they must be safe; then you really do need your head
examined.

If you were the slightest bit interested in answering the OP's original
question the succinct answer would have been: "Because they are not."

Instead you prefer to take over the whole group with your own personal ego
trip whilst sniping at others who attempt to contribute. No wonder such a
big topic has such a small following!

S

I think you're taking the wrong approach. Warnings on poisonous garden centre plants would lead to the dangerous assumption that if there wasn't a warning, the plant was safe. More awareness is needed, yes, but the idea that one could rid gardens of poisonous plants is completely ridiculous. A safer approach is not to eat anything unless you know what it is that you are eating.

I understood it is because the poppies don't produce usable amounts of the drug in our climate. Once they start being grown in indoor heated facilities things may change.

"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-20 03:29:52 +0100, "Spamlet"
said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-19 19:34:08 +0100, "Spamlet"
said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 20:23:24 +0100, "Spamlet"

said:


"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 02:20:50 +0100, said:

On 16 Sep, 23:06, "Spamlet" wrote:
"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in
messagenew
...

Derelict or lightly managed gardens are often the last refuge of
wild
pla
nts
that have been mown, strimmed, and poisoned away by councils all
over
the
country, so do look out for anything that turns up: it may be a
wild
plan
t
from before your house was built. In our garden for example we
have
Potentilla anglica, which only grows in one other known site in
the
town,
and is endangered by scrub growth there.

Our local rag is reporting a gardener finding devil's trumpet
(datura
stramonium) and "contacting ... Council to arrange for the plant to
be
removed" as it "contains dangerous levels of poison". However,
Googling it reveals you can buy it on eBay from what look like
professional sellers, so presumably it can't be that bad and this
is
largely a press scare story.

But it does raise the question as to whether there have been any
occurances of gardeners chucking an unrecognised poisonous
volunteer
on the compost heap and being seriously harmed then or a year later
when ingesting their next crop?

Chris

It doesn't specify the means of ingesting the poison but according
to
a
page on the RHS, between 1962 and 1978, only 2 people died from
plant
poisoning in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. I assume
figures
aren't available since then or that they stand at zero! If you go
to
the
RHS site there is a list of potentially harmful plants, categorised
by
their degree of toxicity. If you read that and avoided every one of
them,
you'd give up gardening. ;-) Datura is Catgeory B - harmful if
eaten
and so, curiously, is Ricinus which I would have thought would come
into
the 'deadly' category if there was one!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

They could not have been looking very hard: I would imagine that
millions
of
people died from tobacco in that period.

Incidentally, one of the more common 'deadly' poisons contained in
our
plants is hyocyamine: which you can buy in purified form over the
counter
in
any supermarket as 'Buscopan'. I use it all too often, and it is not
all
that effective for curing stomach cramps either... Probably easier
to
use
that way than as the less common 'henbane', which stinks, though.

S

Is this supposed to be a serious answer to people concerned with the
toxicity of garden plants? If so, "don't give up the day job" does
spring
to mind.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

Well who rattled your cage?

Ignorance is the biggest danger and you seem to have it in spades. So
if
you run a garden centre please snip

We don't run a garden centre. And serious questions deserve a proper
answer, not a flippant reference to the uses of tobacco.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

I don't know why I'm bothering with your continued ignorant trollishness:
something which I've encountered in scarcely any other group over a
number
of years. But if you think that my genuine statistical remark about a
plant
that kills millions of people is flippan't compared to your ridiculous
assertion that because 'only 2 people' have been killed by garden plants
a
number of years ago, they must be safe; then you really do need your head
examined.

snip

You've been here about five minutes and already the above nonsense
typifies your behaviour. You used a vague term of 'millions of people' in
a reply that was irrelevant in any case. Heaven help those you attempt to
instruct if that's your ideas of a 'genuine statistical remark'. I made
no assertion of any kind so don't put words into my posts that aren't
there. I quoted from the RHS web site in reply to a serious question.
You confused hyoscine and hyocyamine, too and when politely corrected,
accused Jeff of 'nitpicking' because he gently pointed out *your* error.
I will now admit that when I read your remark that this was the only group
on which you'd encountered rudeness I actually laughed out loud. Nobody
here has been rude to you. They just haven't rolled over and welcomed you
as an expert every time you post. Some have objected to your overbearing
style. You, otoh, have waded straight in with one insult after another.
For example, people who post on-topic to a group for more than 12 years
aren't trolls. However, people who arrive on a group out of the blue,
don't appear to have read or learned anything about that group and
immediately start laying about them, may justly be regarded as such, if
only because of the bad manners exhibited. And from now on, I shall treat
your posts as they deserve if you continue to flail about, calling people
names and shouting at them!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon

Here we go again:

The thread was supposed to be about the status of tomato plants in the UK.
It was then hijacked into a side discussion on poisonous plants, yet you
complain of others posting 'irrelevant' remarks, after your own contribution
to that irrelevance.

On hyocine/hyoscyamine I did not confuse anything (though I did forget the
's' in my first spelling): I gave a succinct description with the necessary
quote link to the full piece - a link which gave Buscopan under a list of
branded drugs containing hyoscyamine, had you bothered to read it - for
anyone who wanted to read in more depth. If you want to edit the Wiki, you
and anyone else are free to try: I didn't write it, and I won't edit it back
if you want to have a go at improving the Wiki. Despite this, I was still
sniped at - and still the sniping goes on: presumably because every time you
post you give a plug for your own business, so it pays to just drag the
pettiness on and on. Go boil your datura roots and see if the difference
between hyocine and hyoscyamine matters one iota to what it will do to you.

You clearly understand nothing of statistics or of the dangerous complacency
you own quotations invite. Please do tell us how the fact that "only 2
people died from *plant
poisoning* in the whole of Great Britain and Ireland" over an extended
period some years ago is of any statistical use other than as a way of
playing down the dangerous nature of some of those plants? This is exactly
like the smoker who says his grandfather smoked till he was eighty, so it
can't be dangerous.

The reference to tobacco comes relevantly from the topic of discussion -
which you turned into *plant poisoning* in general, after it evolved from
discussion of plants related to the tomato of the OP's question. One of
these alone is one of the world's biggest killers, so it is more relevant
than your own diversion into old RHS reports of UK plants in general. For
nit picking exactitude on tobacco deaths you are going to be disappointed,
because there are numerous ways of, both recording and reporting them. As a
current typical rule of thumb figure, you could do worse than starting with:
"Of every 5 deaths in the USA, 1 is caused from smoking" - from:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_d...bacco_per_year. So in what
way exactly, is it 'nonsense' to say that millions of people died from the -
tomato related - plant, tobacco, in the period that you said only 2 people
had died from *plant poisoning* in the whole of Great Britain and N
Ireland - a period when smoking was much more prevalent than it now is in
the USA and UK? And my supplying this information was not intended to be
nit picking but simply to add to the pool of information that was developing
in the discussion.

Even the nit picking turns up some interesting sites I wouldn't have
otherwise come across, so I thank you for leading me to discover:
http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/ . Where the rarity of actual death and
injury from *accidental* ingestion of poisonous plants is further expanded:
but, curiously, searches for up to date UK data have come up with nothing so
far. The NSO seems to think poisonous plants refers to deliberate drug
taking, as far as I can find so far, so their definition of a plant would
appear to be closer to my own than to that of the RHS if, as I trust, you
have quoted them correctly. With the new emphasis on 'herbal highs' these
figures are likely to be on the rise.

So call it irrelevant if you like.
It is all education to me, and the more you snipe the more interesting
things come to light.

S

"kay" wrote in message
...[color=blue][i]

Spamlet;900792 Wrote:[color=green][i]
"Sacha" wrote in message
...
On 2010-09-18 20:23:24 +0100, "Spamlet" lid
said:



Any gardener wanting to know about the toxicity of any plant just needs
to
do a few google clicks to find out: there is no excuse for ignorance
nowadays - and yet gardens everwhere are jam packed with deadly plants
they
take for granted, that are sold to them by garden centres with no
warnings.



I think you're taking the wrong approach. Warnings on poisonous garden
centre plants would lead to the dangerous assumption that if there
wasn't a warning, the plant was safe. More awareness is needed, yes, but
the idea that one could rid gardens of poisonous plants is completely
ridiculous. A safer approach is not to eat anything unless you know what
it is that you are eating.


Thank you Kay for a sensible reply,

The best approach to plants and fungi is most certainly as you say.
However, I do remember a few years back reading of people experiencing
unpleasant effects from 'dumb cane' for example, and the Swiss figures here
(http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/) still put it as the forth most common
cause of poisoning. So warnings to the unwary, who might not even realise
they had the juice on their fingers, I think should be part of the duty of
care owed to the buyer. (Interestingly Deadly Nightshade still comes top,
though it is pretty hard to find in my experience, and not likely to be used
in flower arrangements!) I have to admit that I experience something of a
shudder, of amazement, when I see punters wandering among gaudy, castor
bean, plants on sale, at the same time as the newspapers are full of scare
stories of ricin poisoning!



Gardens everywhere are packed with opium poppies too: why is no-one ever

arrested for this, while raids on cannabis growers are legion?



I understood it is because the poppies don't produce usable amounts of
the drug in our climate. Once they start being grown in indoor heated
facilities things may change.

Yes they do: the poppy heads were a common household remedy and were
cultivated "mostly in Lincolnshire" for the purpose. Mrs Grieve's excellent
account in "A Modern Herbal" 1932, goes on to tell us that the plant was
first cultivated for the purpose of extracting opium itself as a product by
"Mr John Ball, of Williton, in 1794", but "the expense of the necessary
labour and land [here and in Germany and France] has been too great to
render it profitable." ( I've never understood why people go to the bother
of extracting, and the danger of injecting, themselves with the stuff.)

There is now an on line version of Mrs Grieve's mine of plant law and
information: http://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/mgmh.html

Cheers,
S
--
kay