Subject: Q: Toxicity of house plants.

From: Steve Kelly <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 95 19:45:00 GMT

HOW TOXIC ARE MY HOUSE PLANTS ?
-------------------------------

As a father with a 14 month old hungry child and a large collection of house
plants, I am realising big dangers ahead.

I have been looking around for information about how toxic various house
plants are, without success. The biggest book shop in London couldn't help
and now I've spent an afternoon on Internet (which, by the way, has
introduced me to some *very* good sites) but only come up with 'toxic plants
in Singapore'. Very good, but not much use in the UK!

Can anyone give me pointers to anywhere on the internet I can find how
dangerous my plants are, or any publications on the same subject.

Many Thanks.

STEVE KELLY
-----------

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From: [email-masked] (Fagan 1)
Date: 1 Aug 1995 14:28:20 -0400

I don't know about the UK, but here in the US you can find many books on
herbs that contain much information on such plants.  These can be found in
your local granola-natural-healing type establisment (if you have those
there too).  Many of the plants that we use in the house have "medicinal"
value to some, and these books often give clear warning about the
poisinous ones.  Good Luck!

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From: [email-masked] (James Morley)
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 09:02:19 GMT

>
>Steve:
>
>What plants do you have?  e-mail to me at my office [email-masked] and I'll
>look up what I can.
>
>Sandra Smith Williams
>Dir. of Education
>Birmingham Botanical Gardens
>Birmingham, AL, United States

Having only just subscribed to the bionet.plants newsgroup I was
interested to see the correspondence on UK poisonous houseplants.  We are
regarded as an authority in this area and have a commercially available
(on CD-Rom) database system with interactive identification for the
non-expert.  (This is not intended as a commercial advert!)

>
>P.S.  If one of your plants is called Jerusalem Cherry (member of the
>Solanaceae family, round red fruits), get rid of it immediately.  It's
>highly toxic.  (Don't know if it's sold in the UK, but it's popular here
>around Christmas especially.)

Yes, Solanum pseudocapsicum *is* available in the UK, but the scientific 
literature does not support your claims that this species is highly toxic.  Many 
cases are reported to Poisons Centres every year, but the only symptoms resulting
>from  eating a few berries are nausea, abdominal pain and sometimes drowsiness.

James Morley
[email-masked]

Centre for Economic Botany
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew