Frightful flora
Like the Little Shop of Horrors, Britain’s countryside can be a wild, wild world. Take a walk to see the spectacle, but look – don’t touch!
To wonder at... and walk by!
Common laburnum
As a poisonous plot device in a Daphne du Maurier thriller and an episode of Inspector Lewis Lewis, this tree has a murderous reputation. Known as the golden rain or chain tree for its ribbons of yellow spring flowers, its autumn fruits look worryingly close to the pods of a pea (they are part of the same family). The laburnum is toxic from top to toe, although it’s those like-pea-pods that tempt the unwary. Introduced here in Tudor times, it’s most common in parks and gardens. Look out too for the toxic evergreen yew tree.
Fungi: The frighteners
Like Stephen Kings of the mushroomy world, some fungi like to scare you witless on a walk. Take deadman’s fingers, which pushes dark, bony digits with yellowed fingertips up through the soil like a corpse reaching for the light. Or devil’s fingers, which begin life above ground in a translucent egg-like sac, before bursting out fleshy red and black octopus legs – earning it the name octopus stinkhorn – in what could be a scene from Alien. This one is a lucky find on a walk (unlucky if you’re squeamish) as it’s rare and currently confined to the south of England. These two terrors aren’t known to be deadly, but we wouldn’t prod them with a bargepole, and they’re just the tip of the weird and wonderful festival of shapes fungi can forge.
Fungi: The poisoners
Deathcap. Destroying angel. Poisonpie. Funeral bell. The sickener. The names are terrifying and make it clear ingestion equals death – but the fungus itself often looks innocuous. It’s like an executioner softly whistling while holding a sword behind his back. Even the fairytale red and white toadstool, fly agaric, is highly poisonous. Forest floors and trees erupt with these fruiting bodies in autumn, pushing up from the miles of thready roots below ground known as the mycelium. The telltale difference between toxic and edible species can come down to the shade of the gills or a faint fragrance, so we’ll be admiring but we won’t be picking any fungi this autumn.
Deadly nightshade
A trickster at the top of its game in autumn, when its glossy berries ripen from green to sweet cherryblack. Despite hailing from the same family as tomatoes and potatoes, it is pure poison and just two can blur vision, race the heart, cause vomiting, coma, convulsions and death. Women once dropped nightshade solution in their eyes to dilate their pupils and make them more beautiful, a practice that earned the plant the name belladonna (a variant is still used by eye surgeons today). Every part is poisonous, from its violet spring flowers to its roots, which thrive in disturbed ground and chalk. Its relation, the woody or bittersweet nightshade, is far more common, also toxic and also a looker, twining heart-shaped leaves and strings of shining scarlet berries like fairy-lights through hedges and woodlands.
Hemlock water dropwort & giant hogweed
Like a tale from Horrible Histories, hemlock water dropwort forces a smile from its victim as it kills, as the same muscle convulsant that stops the heart spasms facial muscles into a grin. Like deadly nightshade, this toxic plant – probably the most poisonous in Britain – shares a family with tempting edibles, in this case carrot, celery, coriander and parsnip (as well as the deadly hemlock that famously killed Socrates). It paints an innocent picture on a springtime walk, snowing riverbanks and damp ground with its lacy white parasols, but we’d avoid all of this carrot family unless you really know what you’re about. Also avoid all contact with the giant hogweed: its sap contains a toxin that makes skin sensitive to sun and causes blisters. It’s easily spotted at its full- full-grown height of 10 to 15 feet.
Foxgloves
These tall spears of pink bells are a stalwart of a summer walk, faded now to striking tan seedheads. Black speckles inside each bell were once thought to be fairy handprints, but they’re actually landing strips to help guide bees into the flower to feed on nectar. It’s busy work: there can be 80 blooms a stalk. Its Latin name digitalis purpurea means purple fingers, and you might know digitalis as the name of a cardiac drug too. Every part of a foxglove is poisonous but in the 18th century William Withering discovered just the right dose could treat heart failure. Many toxic plants tread this fine line between killer and healer: deadly nightshade is used to make gastric medicine; castor oil and ricin come from the same plant.