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Monday 11 February 2013

Top 10 plants that will kill you


Top 10 plants that will kill you

1. White snakeroot

















White snake root, also known as White Sanicle or Tall Boneset, is a highly poisonous plant, native to North AmericaWhen the plant is eaten by cattle, the toxin is absorbed into their milk and meat. When humans then, in turn, eat the beef or drink the milk, the toxin enters the body and causes something called milk sickness, which is highly fatal.


2. Doll’s eyes
 




















Doll’s eye, also known as White Baneberry, is a flowering plant native to Eastern and Northern North America.The berries contain a carcinogenic toxin, which has an almost immediate, sedative effect on human cardiac muscles and can easily cause a quick death.

3. Angel’s trumpets












Angel’s trumpets are flowering plants, native to the tropical regions of South America, but found around the world. The plant is sometimes turned into a tea and ingested as a hallucinogenic, recreational drug. As levels of toxicity varies prom plant to plant, and part to part, it is almost impossible to know how much toxins you have ingested. As a result of this, many users have overdosed and died from it.

4. Strychnine tree











The Strychnine tree, better known as poison nut or Quaker Button, is a medium sized tree, native to India and South East Asia.The small seeds inside the trees’ green to orange fruit, is highly toxic, being filled with poisonous alkaloids’ Strychnine and Brucine. 30 mg of these toxins are enough to be fatal to an adult, and will lead to a painful death from violent convulsions due to simultaneous stimulation of sensory ganglia in the spine.

5.English Yew 












The English Yew is native to Europe, Northern Africa and South West Asia. It is a small to medium tree that has seeds enclosed in a soft, red, berry like armor.It takes a dose of about 50g to be fatal to a human. Symptoms include difficulty breathing, muscle tremors, convulsion, collapse and finally cardiac arrest. In cases of severe poisoning, death can set in so fast that the other symptoms are missed.

6.Water hemlock












Water hemlock, or poison parsnip, is a group of highly poisonous plants that is native to the temperate regions of the northern hemisphere. This poison is found in all parts of the plant but is most concentrated in the roots, which is most potent in the spring. Besides the almost immediate seizures, other symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pains, tremors and confusion. Death is usually caused by respiratory failure or ventricular fibrillation and can occur just a few hours after ingestion.

7. Wolfsbane

 










Wolfsbane, also known as leopard’s bane, woman’s bane or devils helmet, is a plant belonging to the buttercup family. These perennial plants are native to mountainous regions of the northern hemisphere.The plant contains very large quantities of a poison called alkaloid pseudaconitine.In cases of ingestion, symptoms, which include burning in the limbs and abdomen, sets in immediately. In cases of large doses, death can occur within 2-6 hours and 20ml is enough to kill an adult human.

8. Rosary Pea
 










The Rosary Pea, also known as Crab’s eye or Jumbie bead, is a slender perennial climber that twines around trees, shrubs and hedges. The plant is native to Indonesia, but grows in most parts of the world. The poison contained in the plant (abrin) is very similar to the poison ricin, found in some other poisonous plants. There is one main difference between these poisons, and that is that abrin is about 75 times stronger than ricin. This concludes that the lethal dose is much less, and in some cases as little as 3 micrograms can kill an adult human. Using seeds as beads even poses a huge threat, as people have been known to die, just from pricking their fingers on the drill bits used to drill the tiny holes in the seeds.

9. Belladonna 












Belladonna, also known as Devils berries, death cherries or deadly nightshade, is native to Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.The whole plant is poisonous, but berries usually play the greatest risk, as they are sweet and tend to attract children. 10 – 20 berries can kill an adult, but it only takes 1 leaf (in which the poisons are much more concentrated) to kill a full grown man.

10. Castor plants 












Castor plants are indigenous to the Mediterranean basin, eastern Africa and India, but are widely grown as an ornamental plant.Strangely, humans are the most sensitive to these seeds, as it takes 1-4 to kill a full grown human, 11 to kill a dog and a whopping 80 seeds to kill a duck. The castor plant currently holds the Guinness World Record for most poisonous pl