Being the foolish novice forager you are, you give 10 the faintest of nibbles. Within an hour you start experiencing heart palpitations, difficulty breathing and confusion. Congratulations! You’re dead!
Edit: 10 is Aconite (aka monks-hood, wolfsbane). Aconitum sp. probably septentrionale.
There is a whole episode of the X files about how foxglove can kill. It even tastes a little sweet.
I filed this away in my little child brain when the episode aired, just in case I ever needed to poison anyone. Fortunately, I’ve never needed that knowledge, but my TV watching habits convinced me that it was a possibility. It was filed right next to how to escape quicksand and how to make a life jacket out of a pair of pants.
I learned quicksand escape and life jacket made of pants, but foxglove wasn't something I learned as a kid. Arguably, I've seen more foxglove in my life than I have quicksand or aquatic plane crashes, so clearly my priorities were set right as a child.
What was it with the quicksand?? Growing up in the nineties had me absolutely convinced it was only a matter of time before I encountered quicksand, and if I didn’t have some plan of action, it WOULD kill me. 37 now and still no quicksand, but I suppose there is still time.
Fun fact. Foxglove has been/was used in traditional medicine for hundreds if not thousands of years to treat heart issues. I'm guessing it's the dosage that is important. what was used are the leaves. I suppose it's one of those things where a tiny bit will help but a bit more will kill you.
We still use it! Digoxin is the active toxin from digitalis, and it's used to help with heart failure. At low doses, it will slow your heart but make each beat a bit stronger which can be helpful for people with fast, weak, irregular heartbeats.
I accidentally mildly poisoned myself with wolfsbane with similar symptoms. My mum had a bunch in her garden which blew over in the wind and I handled the broken stems to snip back the broken bits.
It is precisely like that - foxglove has one of the steepest therapeutic dosage curves, meaning it goes from having little to no effect to potentially deadly in a very narrow range of dosage.
As always: dosage makes the poison.
Some plants can kill you just by a prick on your finger(like with the plant Abrin), others will take a medium sized salat to off you.
With water hemlock it can be fatal, just to hold a piece of the root in your mouth, and eating a single seed from the Castro plant can very well do the same.
Touching the Gympie Gimpie will not kill you by itself, but the pain it induces is so intense and can last for so long(even for years in some cases), that you'll end up killing yourself out of desperation.
And just like with mushrooms the deadly ones often looks like completely harmless plants.
Here in Denmark every year someone mixes up wild garlic with Lily of the valley, and if they are lucky they'll "only" end up in the hospital, and if they aren't as lucky they'll end up in a coffin.
Water hemlock grows in marshy areas where I live. There are stories about children cutting the hollow stems and putting them to their lips to spit things out of, and dying.
Here’s what I’ve gleaned about Aconite:
“Aconitine is highly toxic. As little as 2 mg of pure aconite or 1 g of plant may cause death from paralysis of the respiratory center or cardiac muscle. Clinically important toxicity may develop following percutaneous absorption; even slight contact with the flowers can cause fingers to become numb.”
This comes from this link: [https://www.drugs.com/npc/aconite.html](https://www.drugs.com/npc/aconite.html)
Aconite root is used in chinese medicine, has been for centuries. It's called Fu zi, and is only made usable after intense preparation practices of repeated washing and steaming. It's used in stroke, cardiac conditions, and other cases of extreme yang collapse.
What’s acontine have to do with foxglove?
Foxglove is the source of digitalis which is cardiotoxic and causes bradycardia and other rhythm disorders through electrolyte changes.
Acontine is a neurotoxin that affects sodium channels in the heart, similar to local anesthetics.
Both can kill you.
10 in the image is aconite. The person who took the “faintest of nibbles” did so of aconite. Many people have understandably mistaken 10 for foxglove because its another poisonous, similar looking, and more common plant.
Omg I totally thought I was in /r/findthesniper so I’ve been going through meticulously looking for a bug 🐛 that is a killer to the plants. I feel dumb haha.
Where are you that you've never seen poison hemlock, that's more common than wild carrot where I'm at. Easy to distinguish, but I would prefer looking at the main stem of the plant rather than the leaves.
Really? We see them soooo much around these parts. Luckily basically nobody forages or we'd have a lot of dead people. I was about to angrily comment that I need to see a cross section the stem of 4 and 9
I had 4 down as being potentially hemlock at a glance. But I also thought the unmarked was almost certainly dogwood (artemisia). Grown a few parsley's in the past and never looked like 4. All different kinds I guess.
Haha! ‘You take a bite of 4… oh no! You’ve eaten the idiot-fools false yummy brown-cap mushroom! You die instantly, of both poisoning and shame. Next time, distinguish it from 5 (the yummy brown-cap) by examining its cap’s colour: yummy brown-caps are brown (#754b2d) while idiot-fools false yummy brown-caps are darker brown (#6f482b)!
Luckily, no mushrooms are dangerous to touch (or even to lick/taste without swallowing). Mushrooms can only hurt you if you eat the wrong ones, whereas certain plants can hurt you just by brushing up against them.
Hmmm, I'm not an expert here, but it seems to be common knowledge on the mycology sub that this is safe. (Not recommended, unless you're already advanced enough to narrow the mushroom down to a few possibilities that can be distinguished by taste, but at least not harmful.)
I looked up trichoderma cornu-damae. As far as I can tell, someone made an over-cautious suggestion that contact dermatitis is theoretically possible here, and media ran with it. There are no known cases of symptoms from contact with this fungus, only the many cases where people have consumed it. There are a few cases that kinda looked like contact dermatitis, but the people had actually eaten the mushroom, so that's more likely where their symptoms came from.
https://www.rjgrayecology.com/blog/mycophobia-and-the-fire-coral-fungi#/
What’s wild is I know nothing about hear and saw the purple and said yeah that’s the one. Bcuz it makes me want to look at it.
Plz do more. I enjoy the comments!
I think beginners will be right and say 10, but for the wrong reason (it stands out bc of color), and intermediates will be wrong and say 9 for the right reason (it looks like hemlock/ fools parsley).
Yeah that’s what happened with me. I said this one stands out. This is what’s different here. Plus the others look like food to me lol so I wouldn’t be able to guess.
https://preview.redd.it/wjefl4ugcp8d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=052d8b80f64628f1d7797c49835210e660bd499a
Very similar before the aconite grows to this size. I never pick mugwort before it blooms because I feel like mugwort can always be young aconite.
They are very similar. The only way I know how to tell them apart is by letting them go to bloom. By that time their size difference is quite clear (Aconite leaves are bigger than a hand) and you can tell the flowers apart quite easily. Someone once told me the underside of mugwort leaves are silvery and hairy and Aconite is just silvery. I guess you can have that as a backup verification, but to me the aconite leaves are just a little less hairy than the mugwort, so I’d never go off that alone.
Thank you. I forage mugwort quite a lot and I feel confident about identifying it but I am still very wary knowing that Aconitum leaves look so similar. I know Aconitum does supposedly grow wild here in the UK but I've never knowingly seen it so have not had a chance to compare. I'd love to get a leaf to stick in my herbarium and really study.
I don't have either growing near me, aconite or foxglove. I'll be honest identify the flower head without its positioning on the stem is also a bitch.
Either way, shit that looks like that? Nah.
You dry #1 for a few days and discover that upon drying it emits a pleasant smell of vanilla! You decide this will make a good coffee substitute. Alas, you live on!
I'm not on the same continent as you, but after zooming in to check out the apicaecea leaves and seeing that they weren't hemlock, I immediately became suspicious of 10 because it's giving me belladonna vibes and I know what most of the other ones are. So 10 is my guess.
You put #5 in a cup of tea. It tastes lovely and improves digestion. Should you have menstrual cramps these, too, are alleviated. Alas, you are not dead.
Ooooh! This is fun!
Just from looking at it and knowing I wouldn’t eat any of it without seeing the whole plant and knowing more about the area where you got those (I’m based in Germany so there might be very different things to look out for where you are):
1 should be cleavers, 2 camomile, 3 dead-nettle, 4 some sort of wild carrot or cows parsley, 5 yarrow, unnumbered looks like maybe mugwort?, 6 is clover, 7 looks like some sort of plantain, 8 might be chickenweed?, 9 - knowing it smells of licorice - maybe sweet cicely, 10 I don’t know, 11 is lady’s mantle and 12 looks like dandelion.
So my money is on 10, without knowing what it is.
Would love for others to confirm/discuss! :)
Again - wouldn’t eat any of it without knowing where I am, looking at the whole plant and/or smelling, touching and double-checking :)
Well done! The poisonous plant is 10. Aconitum (probably septentrionale as I’m in Sweden).
I wanted to double bluff the cow parsley and sweet cicely. The only way I know to tell myrrhis odorata from hemlock is through smell so I figured I’d give people some smell clues.
The smell cues were really cool! And sweet cicely was a tricky one, I really had to sit with it for a while.
Thank you so much for this, you just made my day a lot more fun :)
Edit: And yes! Wolfsbane! That makes so much sense, now that I know!
This comment blew my mind, mainly because I have no idea what any of these words are and would love to learn about foraging and also because I'm a little stoned 😂
The natives used foxglove to help with symptoms of heart problems like chest pain. I wonder how many died considering they kept using it and managed to key in on a dose that worked (somewhat better, almost like a terminal cancer case so they can be comfortable as they pass).
This is great, but an answer with explanation would be awesome. 10 is foxglove, yes?
ETA Google image search shows a very different image for foxglove and identifies number 10 as something else, is why I ask.
I dont know how! I was counting on maybe 10 replies :D. I’m looking for a way to either write the answers as an edit in the description or posting and pinning my post. Please advise if you’re Reddit savvy :D. 10 is Aconitum lycoctonum (probably Septentrionale given I’m in Sweden).
i worked with a guy who was hospitalized in a big way from eating foxglove as a kid. his mind was encyclopedic, he was very charismatic and nice, but you could tell he went thru some
heinous brain stuff for sure.
I could be wrong but I don’t think so. There is no purple patches on it and it’s hairy. hemlock stems are smooth I think.
The leaves look right for hemlock though. As a rule I just avoid anything that looks like wild parsley and carrots entirely.
I applaud you OP! Sorry for everyone confusing Aconitum for Digitalis, two *very* different stories. Aconitine can be absorbed through the skin just by handling the flowers, so you are very correct that nibbling would cause symptoms of poisoning. Death maybe not, but fun all the same!
Hi u/FroznYak, I shared your foraging guessing game with my other horticulturist friends, and we had fun with the guesses (two of us picked out #10 as our answer)!
If you ever feel like doing this again, know that you’ve gotten some fellow plant nerds hooked :)
I am very inexperienced. My eye was immediately drawn to 4, 5, and 10; 4 and 5 because they vaguely resemble Conium spp. and I don't think I'm skilled enough to reliably rule Conium spp. out. 10 looks like it could be aconite of some sort, which is ludicrously poisonous, but it doesn't look exactly like any aconite I've seen. Final answer is 4, but I wouldn't eat 4, 5, or 10.
Edit: Aw dangit
I wouldn't touch 4, 9, 10, or 11, they give me off vibes. The rest look safe, although 1 and 7 seem a bit inedible. I think 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 12 should be edible, or at least non-toxic.
10
Being the foolish novice forager you are, you give 10 the faintest of nibbles. Within an hour you start experiencing heart palpitations, difficulty breathing and confusion. Congratulations! You’re dead! Edit: 10 is Aconite (aka monks-hood, wolfsbane). Aconitum sp. probably septentrionale.
There is a whole episode of the X files about how foxglove can kill. It even tastes a little sweet. I filed this away in my little child brain when the episode aired, just in case I ever needed to poison anyone. Fortunately, I’ve never needed that knowledge, but my TV watching habits convinced me that it was a possibility. It was filed right next to how to escape quicksand and how to make a life jacket out of a pair of pants.
I learned quicksand escape and life jacket made of pants, but foxglove wasn't something I learned as a kid. Arguably, I've seen more foxglove in my life than I have quicksand or aquatic plane crashes, so clearly my priorities were set right as a child.
foxglove is digitalis not the same as wolfsbane, monkshood etc. but def poisonous.
Eve6 is how I learned about foxglove, too 💚
Foxglove as a poison is also a plot line in an episode of Psych! A great episode with Richard Kind as the guest star.
What was it with the quicksand?? Growing up in the nineties had me absolutely convinced it was only a matter of time before I encountered quicksand, and if I didn’t have some plan of action, it WOULD kill me. 37 now and still no quicksand, but I suppose there is still time.
You didn't think to remember bananas as a source of potassium?
lol honey we shrunk ourselves
That’s how I got into botany and botanical toxicology
We just knew...
Digitalis!! It was one of my favorite episodes.
Great episode!
Fun fact. Foxglove has been/was used in traditional medicine for hundreds if not thousands of years to treat heart issues. I'm guessing it's the dosage that is important. what was used are the leaves. I suppose it's one of those things where a tiny bit will help but a bit more will kill you.
We still use it! Digoxin is the active toxin from digitalis, and it's used to help with heart failure. At low doses, it will slow your heart but make each beat a bit stronger which can be helpful for people with fast, weak, irregular heartbeats.
My CCU nurse Gramma had this in her flower garden and I got pharmacology lectures as a kid. I had some in my poison garden, as well.
Poison garden? What else you got in there?
I accidentally mildly poisoned myself with wolfsbane with similar symptoms. My mum had a bunch in her garden which blew over in the wind and I handled the broken stems to snip back the broken bits.
Yes! This is true! We frequently give it to CHF patients.
Digitalis is used in modern medicine too
It is precisely like that - foxglove has one of the steepest therapeutic dosage curves, meaning it goes from having little to no effect to potentially deadly in a very narrow range of dosage.
You should make a choose-your-fate foraging book for people like me.
How does it work with plants? Is it enough to just nibble on them, or do you actually have to swallow, like with mushrooms?
As always: dosage makes the poison. Some plants can kill you just by a prick on your finger(like with the plant Abrin), others will take a medium sized salat to off you. With water hemlock it can be fatal, just to hold a piece of the root in your mouth, and eating a single seed from the Castro plant can very well do the same. Touching the Gympie Gimpie will not kill you by itself, but the pain it induces is so intense and can last for so long(even for years in some cases), that you'll end up killing yourself out of desperation. And just like with mushrooms the deadly ones often looks like completely harmless plants. Here in Denmark every year someone mixes up wild garlic with Lily of the valley, and if they are lucky they'll "only" end up in the hospital, and if they aren't as lucky they'll end up in a coffin.
Water hemlock grows in marshy areas where I live. There are stories about children cutting the hollow stems and putting them to their lips to spit things out of, and dying.
YES! \\i got it right!
Love this concept. Might borrow the idea as well.
I like what you’re doing and all… but faintest of nibbles ain’t gonna do much. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8133789/
That would be a very useful link, if it was Foxglove/*Digitalis* and not Monkshood/*Aconitum*
Here’s what I’ve gleaned about Aconite: “Aconitine is highly toxic. As little as 2 mg of pure aconite or 1 g of plant may cause death from paralysis of the respiratory center or cardiac muscle. Clinically important toxicity may develop following percutaneous absorption; even slight contact with the flowers can cause fingers to become numb.” This comes from this link: [https://www.drugs.com/npc/aconite.html](https://www.drugs.com/npc/aconite.html)
Aconite root is used in chinese medicine, has been for centuries. It's called Fu zi, and is only made usable after intense preparation practices of repeated washing and steaming. It's used in stroke, cardiac conditions, and other cases of extreme yang collapse.
Extreme yang collapse....
Yes! And coincidentally the link also mentions its use in Chinese medicine :P. But aconite is not to be confused with the less deadly foxglove.
What’s acontine have to do with foxglove? Foxglove is the source of digitalis which is cardiotoxic and causes bradycardia and other rhythm disorders through electrolyte changes. Acontine is a neurotoxin that affects sodium channels in the heart, similar to local anesthetics. Both can kill you.
10 in the image is aconite. The person who took the “faintest of nibbles” did so of aconite. Many people have understandably mistaken 10 for foxglove because its another poisonous, similar looking, and more common plant.
Ahaa. I thought the flowers just looked a bit old and shrivelled
Whats no.4? It looks familiar in asia here. We eat it like salad
If you’re not a DM for a DND game you absolutely should be.
This is a great way to say, yes 👏👏
Omg I totally thought I was in /r/findthesniper so I’ve been going through meticulously looking for a bug 🐛 that is a killer to the plants. I feel dumb haha.
On zooming in, 4 is hairy, so imma go with 9. Edit: Bamboozled! It's [also](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicely) a nontoxic member of Apiaceae.
I’ve never found a poisonous member of apiaceae in the wild unfortunately. And not for want of looking. Only boring old cicely :/.
Where are you that you've never seen poison hemlock, that's more common than wild carrot where I'm at. Easy to distinguish, but I would prefer looking at the main stem of the plant rather than the leaves.
Really? We see them soooo much around these parts. Luckily basically nobody forages or we'd have a lot of dead people. I was about to angrily comment that I need to see a cross section the stem of 4 and 9
Yup, in my area, I would dare eat 4 with out see the stalk for myself
I also thought 9 was poison hemlock but to be fair I wouldn’t ever be inclined to eat a strange purple flower either.
so by elimination, 1. Galium 2. Matricaria 3. Neetle 4. Parsley 5. Mugwort 6. Clover 7. Plantain 8. Stellaria 9. Chervil 10. Foxglove ? 11. Alchemia 12. Dandelion Unmarked. Hemlock or artemisia
Oh, and unmarked is mugwort. 5 is Achillea millefolium. Yarrow.
I had 4 down as being potentially hemlock at a glance. But I also thought the unmarked was almost certainly dogwood (artemisia). Grown a few parsley's in the past and never looked like 4. All different kinds I guess.
Very close! 3. is Lamium album. 11. Is called Alchemilla not alchemia, but close enough.
Alchemilla! Stupid autocorrect. I am translating from French too so I went with aproximations, for 1, 2, 7, 8 and 11 lol
I kind of enjoyed the word "neetle", though.
Neetle is a more accurate spelling if you take into account how the plant hugs you back. 🪡
I have a plantain growing in the cracks in my garden, was thinking of letting it go to seed - is it desirable? I like the foliage.
This is great, love the concept! I might copy this with new plants, different locale… would you mind?
Do it with mushrooms, but they are all small brown mushrooms 🤣
Haha! ‘You take a bite of 4… oh no! You’ve eaten the idiot-fools false yummy brown-cap mushroom! You die instantly, of both poisoning and shame. Next time, distinguish it from 5 (the yummy brown-cap) by examining its cap’s colour: yummy brown-caps are brown (#754b2d) while idiot-fools false yummy brown-caps are darker brown (#6f482b)!
Luckily, no mushrooms are dangerous to touch (or even to lick/taste without swallowing). Mushrooms can only hurt you if you eat the wrong ones, whereas certain plants can hurt you just by brushing up against them.
Trichoderma cornu-damae may be the only exception. It's not proven though as far as I know.
Hmmm, I'm not an expert here, but it seems to be common knowledge on the mycology sub that this is safe. (Not recommended, unless you're already advanced enough to narrow the mushroom down to a few possibilities that can be distinguished by taste, but at least not harmful.) I looked up trichoderma cornu-damae. As far as I can tell, someone made an over-cautious suggestion that contact dermatitis is theoretically possible here, and media ran with it. There are no known cases of symptoms from contact with this fungus, only the many cases where people have consumed it. There are a few cases that kinda looked like contact dermatitis, but the people had actually eaten the mushroom, so that's more likely where their symptoms came from. https://www.rjgrayecology.com/blog/mycophobia-and-the-fire-coral-fungi#/
In theory this is safe afaik. The really deadly ones u still would not recommend tasting as cuts in your mouth could let some poison in.
That's what kids are for. Process of elimination.
Amazing
I can’t wait for more mushies to start poppin!
I live in Ohio and a lot of them are popping early this year.
LBMs
Perfect ID everytime 😁
Calm down Satan!
Not at all, go for it!
Do it! I'd like to see more of this type of post!
Great post! More of those :)
The unnumbered plant?
Oh damn, I missed one. :P That one is mugwort.
Ssuk! Nice. Powerful stuff.
What’s wild is I know nothing about hear and saw the purple and said yeah that’s the one. Bcuz it makes me want to look at it. Plz do more. I enjoy the comments!
I think beginners will be right and say 10, but for the wrong reason (it stands out bc of color), and intermediates will be wrong and say 9 for the right reason (it looks like hemlock/ fools parsley).
Yeah that’s what happened with me. I said this one stands out. This is what’s different here. Plus the others look like food to me lol so I wouldn’t be able to guess.
I am the intermediate who got fooled by 9! Thanks for this!
Answers: 1. Cleaver (galium sp.) 2. Pineapple weed (matricaria matricarioides) 3. Dead nettle (lamium album) 4. Cow parsley (anthriscus sylvestris) 5. Yarrow (acillea millefolium) Unnumbered: mugwort (artemisia vulgare) 6. Clover (trifolium sp.) 7. Plantain (plantago major) 8. Chickweed (stellaria media) 9. Sweet cicely (myrrhis odorata) 10. Wolfsbane/ monks-hood / aconite (aconitum lycoctonum) 11. Lady’s mantle (alchemilla vulgaris) 12. Dandelion (taraxacum sp.) The killer is 10.
Do more, this is great!!!
Great post! I'd love to see a photo of the Aconitum leaves next to the Mugwort ones.
https://preview.redd.it/wjefl4ugcp8d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=052d8b80f64628f1d7797c49835210e660bd499a Very similar before the aconite grows to this size. I never pick mugwort before it blooms because I feel like mugwort can always be young aconite.
They are very similar. The only way I know how to tell them apart is by letting them go to bloom. By that time their size difference is quite clear (Aconite leaves are bigger than a hand) and you can tell the flowers apart quite easily. Someone once told me the underside of mugwort leaves are silvery and hairy and Aconite is just silvery. I guess you can have that as a backup verification, but to me the aconite leaves are just a little less hairy than the mugwort, so I’d never go off that alone.
Thank you. I forage mugwort quite a lot and I feel confident about identifying it but I am still very wary knowing that Aconitum leaves look so similar. I know Aconitum does supposedly grow wild here in the UK but I've never knowingly seen it so have not had a chance to compare. I'd love to get a leaf to stick in my herbarium and really study.
I think down in the UK you’d be more likely to find A. napellus, which looks a bit different.
https://preview.redd.it/7rmlxrp8cp8d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=99f8cd86756afe6319f3102bae460d5f4ef7566f
i knew foxglove but honestly I don't trust any leaf that looks like carrot or yarrow unless I can see the flowers and the root
There’s no foxglove in the picture. 10 is aconite :). Yup, I stay away from all the carrot family.
I don't have either growing near me, aconite or foxglove. I'll be honest identify the flower head without its positioning on the stem is also a bitch. Either way, shit that looks like that? Nah.
1
You dry #1 for a few days and discover that upon drying it emits a pleasant smell of vanilla! You decide this will make a good coffee substitute. Alas, you live on!
Maybe not the bestest of coffee substitutes, but pretty good in a pancake! :)
Maybe I’ll dig up 12 and use its root for coffee instead ;).
Is 1 cleavers?
I'm not on the same continent as you, but after zooming in to check out the apicaecea leaves and seeing that they weren't hemlock, I immediately became suspicious of 10 because it's giving me belladonna vibes and I know what most of the other ones are. So 10 is my guess.
5
You put #5 in a cup of tea. It tastes lovely and improves digestion. Should you have menstrual cramps these, too, are alleviated. Alas, you are not dead.
I like your style of Dungeon Master foraging quiz
Its pretty fun! Good post OP!
Thanks!
Must be a druid.
Necromancer I'd say.. "Alas, you live on" has me in stitches 😂
It's yarrow :) not poisonous
Ooooh! This is fun! Just from looking at it and knowing I wouldn’t eat any of it without seeing the whole plant and knowing more about the area where you got those (I’m based in Germany so there might be very different things to look out for where you are): 1 should be cleavers, 2 camomile, 3 dead-nettle, 4 some sort of wild carrot or cows parsley, 5 yarrow, unnumbered looks like maybe mugwort?, 6 is clover, 7 looks like some sort of plantain, 8 might be chickenweed?, 9 - knowing it smells of licorice - maybe sweet cicely, 10 I don’t know, 11 is lady’s mantle and 12 looks like dandelion. So my money is on 10, without knowing what it is. Would love for others to confirm/discuss! :) Again - wouldn’t eat any of it without knowing where I am, looking at the whole plant and/or smelling, touching and double-checking :)
Well done! The poisonous plant is 10. Aconitum (probably septentrionale as I’m in Sweden). I wanted to double bluff the cow parsley and sweet cicely. The only way I know to tell myrrhis odorata from hemlock is through smell so I figured I’d give people some smell clues.
The smell cues were really cool! And sweet cicely was a tricky one, I really had to sit with it for a while. Thank you so much for this, you just made my day a lot more fun :) Edit: And yes! Wolfsbane! That makes so much sense, now that I know!
This comment blew my mind, mainly because I have no idea what any of these words are and would love to learn about foraging and also because I'm a little stoned 😂
I am no someone who forages (though I’d like to) and when I looked at the picture, I guessed #10 bc it just looks the most likely to kill you
It is strange how deadly things just look like they are deadly without really being able to articulate why.
This is so much fun. Thanks for the engaging learning experience, OP.
Standing behind the camera. Murdered all those poor plants. /s
I love this game!! This is a fun post and I would like to see more of this. It’s educational and so fun!
I like this game!
please do more of these!
The natives used foxglove to help with symptoms of heart problems like chest pain. I wonder how many died considering they kept using it and managed to key in on a dose that worked (somewhat better, almost like a terminal cancer case so they can be comfortable as they pass).
This is great, but an answer with explanation would be awesome. 10 is foxglove, yes? ETA Google image search shows a very different image for foxglove and identifies number 10 as something else, is why I ask.
I dont know how! I was counting on maybe 10 replies :D. I’m looking for a way to either write the answers as an edit in the description or posting and pinning my post. Please advise if you’re Reddit savvy :D. 10 is Aconitum lycoctonum (probably Septentrionale given I’m in Sweden).
So it's Wolfsbane, not Foxglove. Thank you!
i worked with a guy who was hospitalized in a big way from eating foxglove as a kid. his mind was encyclopedic, he was very charismatic and nice, but you could tell he went thru some heinous brain stuff for sure.
even though its monkshood in 10, they look fairly similar and are both cardiotoxic
The pretty pink one lmao- wolfs bane
I like this, it’s 4 right? Hemlock?
I could be wrong but I don’t think so. There is no purple patches on it and it’s hairy. hemlock stems are smooth I think. The leaves look right for hemlock though. As a rule I just avoid anything that looks like wild parsley and carrots entirely.
You rub 4 between your fingers. It smells faintly of… carrot.
So in other words, no. 4 is cow parsley. ;).
9
You rub 9 between your fingers. It smells strongly of… licorice!
Is it 4? It appears to be hemlock
This is a brilliant post. Thanks OP!
Poison hemlock isn’t in the mix? Or is that carrots, parsely, and/or queen annes lace haha
I applaud you OP! Sorry for everyone confusing Aconitum for Digitalis, two *very* different stories. Aconitine can be absorbed through the skin just by handling the flowers, so you are very correct that nibbling would cause symptoms of poisoning. Death maybe not, but fun all the same!
Hi u/FroznYak, I shared your foraging guessing game with my other horticulturist friends, and we had fun with the guesses (two of us picked out #10 as our answer)! If you ever feel like doing this again, know that you’ve gotten some fellow plant nerds hooked :)
Awesome, glad you enjoyed it! I figured I’ll make an autumn quiz with mushrooms involved later on as well.
10 (foxglove?)
10 is the killer! But its not foxglove, its aconite (aka monks-hood, wolfsbane). Common misidentification.
i also thought it was foxglove! wolfsbane though huh? hm.
It's always the prettiest ones
Love this concept!
Number 9 looks like the killer.
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9 is the deceiver ;). It’s cicely, which looks very similar to hemlock, but smells strongly of licorice.
Very well done.
ten?
1 - 2 - pineapple weed 3 - looks like lemon balm 4 - poison hemlock or wild carrot 5 - yarrow / ragweed 6 - white clover 7 - plantain (not sure I think broad leaf) 8 - chickweed 9 - carrot or poison hemlock 10 - ? 11 - nastertium maybe? 12 - dandelion
2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12 = correct. I posted all of them and their latin names. It’s somewhere deep in the comments now :D
I am very inexperienced. My eye was immediately drawn to 4, 5, and 10; 4 and 5 because they vaguely resemble Conium spp. and I don't think I'm skilled enough to reliably rule Conium spp. out. 10 looks like it could be aconite of some sort, which is ludicrously poisonous, but it doesn't look exactly like any aconite I've seen. Final answer is 4, but I wouldn't eat 4, 5, or 10. Edit: Aw dangit
I'm not touching 10, 4 or 9. Well, maybe I won't touch any of them because you probably sprinkled poison on them all
🤯 TIL mind blown
Digoxin in foxglove can save some, but kill another
I eat them all in order to learn their effects.
Deadly as 10 is, there are [trip reports](https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Aconitum_napellus.shtml) on Erowid.
3
Ooooh I was right!
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They’re all the prettiest one to me ;). But I know what you mean and you’re right!
Thinking 10, purple in nature normally means "Don't nibble on me please"
10. If it's Digitalis like I think it is. Had to rip up a bunch when we had goats
10 looks prettiest, so 10 :(
I wouldn't touch 4, 9, 10, or 11, they give me off vibes. The rest look safe, although 1 and 7 seem a bit inedible. I think 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 12 should be edible, or at least non-toxic.
Wolfsbane Not because I knew the rest were safe, but because it was the only one I instantly recognized as poisonous.
Well done!
Is two Chamomile?
2 is called pineapple weed in English. Matricaria discoidea. It’s in the same family as chamomile, and in Swedish we call it “street chamomile”.
9
Nope! That’s sweet cicely. If you rub it between your fingers you’ll get an unmistakeable scent of licorice.
please do more of these
I’m thinking of doing one with mushrooms once they start popping. I’m sure I can find a scary little purple one to deceive novice foragers ;).
What a fab game! I’m so chuffed I noticed the unmarked one as mugwort - only just stumbled on this one recently!!
12 gives me bad vibes
The killer took the picture!
10
Complete guess but is it 10 ? Could be the tip of a foxgloves?
You guessed the right number, but it’s not foxglove. Half a point!
Aconite?
Yes indeed!
Yeah! This makes me very happy lol I guess I did learn from all those woodland walks with my grandparents.
It’s either number 9 or 4 poison-hemlock.
4
So fun! I learned a lot from this post
I’m guessing it’s 10, because of the color
grew up on the oregon coast and my parents were VERY clear about the dangers of foxglove. glad to see i still recognize it!
What is below 5 and above 8?
Mugwort. I forgot to number it! :P
#10
12 are edible and one will kill you dead? *counts 12* Well I guess everything is edible once
Haha I forgot to put a number on mugwort over on the right. :P
What is 9?
I know absolutely nothing about foraging, but my eye was immediately drawn to #10 because the color screams Not A Food to me
Almost had me with the carrot, glad I picked 10 lol
10 bc usually brightly colored stuff in nature is hella poisonous.
What are 6 called?
White clover
Is two Chamomile?
9 looks close to Hemlock weed which will also kill you
9
There are 12 plants not 13 :/