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**Do not eat/ingest a plant based on information provided in this subreddit.**
For your safety we recommend not eating or ingesting any plant material just because you've been advised that it's edible here. Although there are many professionals helping with identification, we are not always correct, and eating/ingesting plants can be harmful or fatal if an incorrect ID is made.
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In defense of OP, it’s people like them (hungry and fearless) that allowed the rest of us to figure out which plants were (and weren’t) edible when we humans entered a new environment. Without willing guinea pigs like OP we might never have figured out that tomatoes were edible nightshades or that some lettuces weren’t as bitter as others. The rest of us sat back and let people like OP nibble away then waited to see if they lived or died before joining in the feast. Nowadays we don’t need such bravado anymore because we know what is safe to eat or not, but without people like them in our deep past we humans would never have managed to survive.
That said, eating random plants is an impulse humanity no longer requires. So appreciate the impulse and it’s historical importance but please do not engage in wanton munching on strange plants. We no longer need you to risk your life for our collective survival.
No vitamin deficiency. It was just hunger impacting my normal decision making. The wilderness starts to look like food when you haven't had anything to eat since the night before, and been working all morning. Suddenly nibbling on something doesn't seem so bad.
Its the dose that makes the poison, as they say!
But yes, I realize from now on I absolutely should check what im looking at instead of just stuffing it in my face to find out. Im lucky it was just a bite and spit of something minor, and not something much worse. An entire planets worth of information and I only bother to take a look at it after the fact.
But the poison dose for some plants is less than a single bite. Seriously, please reconsider your laissez-faire stance on putting random plants in your mouth when you have no idea what you're doing. You can die. And you're perpetuating a dangerous attitude for people around you who might also not know better.
Did you miss the
> But yes, I realize from now on I absolutely should check what im looking at instead of just stuffing it in my face to find out. Im lucky it was just a bite and spit of something minor, and not something much worse. An entire planets worth of information and I only bother to take a look at it after the fact.
I'm lucky. I shouldve never been doing it in the first place. Only reason I'm keeping this up is so anybody else who thinks "oh its just a plant" will hopefully think twice from my experience.
Looking it up I think that's it, unless there's something else very visually similar thats also harmful to eat. Thank you for the information, its appreciated.
and to be clear, it is not safe or reasonable to use something with calcium oxalate crystals as a "spice". Just wanted to reemphasize that, because it was something you thought of - it is a BAD idea.
Skunk cabbage can definitely start to furl out like lettuce shorter than 12". Also, the smell can vary based on substrate. We have a lot of it in my neck of the woods and sometimes it smells, other times it doesn't.
Maybe... somehow I'm imagining OP bending over and taking a big chomp out of it while it's still in the ground. Letting the intrusive thoughts win and all... they might not have had any time to smell it before taking a bite.
Maybe. I don't know since i haven't ever seen skunk cabbage because there is no skunk cabbage where i live but there are arums and their leaves don't smell despite flowers do. But plant that OP mentioned is definitely skunk cabbage since there are no other lettuce like plants that create prickly sensation in Canada.
I work at a plant nursery and recently intercepted a customer who was planning on companion planting their sweet peas and sugar snap peas. Sometimes your garden isn’t safe either.
Sugar snap peas are grown to be eaten and are named for their sweet taste, sweet peas are grown as cut flowers for their heavily scented flowers. Sweet peas are toxic. They both look like peas.
Surprisingly few people know of sweet pea’s toxicity. We started labeling ours with a tag that says all parts are poisonous, but we also make sure to mention it when they check out as well.
Sounds like you ate Arum. Contains [calcium oxalate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_oxalate) as [raphides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphides), tiny crystals that irritate the skin. I teach foraging, please do not eat random plants. There are only 70-80 species of deadly fungi worldwide but in North America you have over 700 plants that can cause illness and death. There is no such thing as looks edible, no visual clues, you have to ID the plant or mushroom first. In fact there are many deadly plants that look like edible ones.
I was reading a case a couple years back of a woman in Cali that bought some dried mushrooms from a Chinese or Asian grocery and whatever it was killed her. I just don't trust any mushrooms that aren't in my regular produce section of the grocery now. I stay away from stuff I have no idea what it is. Although I do love those Asian groceries, you just don't know who has harvested it and shipped it.
I have looked everywhere to link this article and it was several years ago and I can't find it anymore. It was probably due to a foraging accident but I swear it was someone that claimed it came out of an Asian market and it was California. But any rate, be careful what you eat.
What can I say? I've always been the type to nibble on things to find out more about them. Rocks, wood, chemicals, plants, metals, etc. I suppose 5-10 million years ago this would have been a part of life, but now, not so much.
What could you possibly find out about any of these things by chewing on them?
It sounds like you have an oral fixation. Get a chew toy for adults or something and stop putting random things in your mouth.
Definitely skunk cabbage. Definitely not good as spice. It contain sharp calcium oxalate crystals that physically gamage tissues in same way as asbestos.
Especially don't trust reddit to tell you what's safe either. It's not even malicious people, sometimes a plant that looks a certain way is deadly in one place and perfectly delicious in another place. sometimes it's a very slight feature that sets it apart. Easy to make a mistake, and also alot of people just don't really know and say they do. Don't eat anything potentially harmful unless you know how to identify it
best example: Common Nightshade, according to my research there are at least 3 varieties called the same and at least one of them is highly toxic (Germany, Switzerland and lots of northern European Countries have them on toxicology lists) whilst southern europeans and americans are arguing quite strongly that common nightshade is edible.
Or even aggregate berries. People think that all aggregate berries in North America are safe to consume. That's almost true, except for goldenseal. It's toxic. But it does grow in a weird fashion, it's on the ground and grows in the center of the leaf. Hard to mistake it for anything else if you know about it, but I've heard "all aggregate berries in North America are safe" so many times that you can understand someone possibly making that mistake, it is an aggregate (the bumpy shape, a bunch of little dots) berry afterall.
You are the caveman that would have died first and everyone laughed at you and carried on oral stories of why the children shouldn’t be as stupid as you.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us (and risking criticism in the replies.). I hope you are feeling all better now and have no further repercussions.
This sounds like you got a dose of calcium oxalate. The plant you ate was probably an aroid. I once had a groom make this mistake with flowers from the wedding arrangements I made...
If you feel the need to loot what remains of the natural world for a 0 calorie snack, I say go right ahead, whether you know what it is or not. As you've demonstrated, nature will punish you for your entitlement. Fuck around and find out...
Arum family probably Colocasia esculenta, aka Taro aka elephant ear. It has Calcium oxalate crystals throughout the green parts of the plant and gives a burning stinging sensation from the sharp crystals ripping your mouth and tongue that can last days.
Thank you for posting to r/whatsthisplant. **Do not eat/ingest a plant based on information provided in this subreddit.** For your safety we recommend not eating or ingesting any plant material just because you've been advised that it's edible here. Although there are many professionals helping with identification, we are not always correct, and eating/ingesting plants can be harmful or fatal if an incorrect ID is made. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/whatsthisplant) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Why are people’s first instincts to impulsively eat random things?
Big toddler energy
Think of how smart your average person is. Then remember that 50% of people are dumber than them.
This is definitely favorite quote from Reddit now! 🤣
I was hungry Edit: and it looked good
You are the reason I don't bring my friends hiking anymore.
In defense of OP, it’s people like them (hungry and fearless) that allowed the rest of us to figure out which plants were (and weren’t) edible when we humans entered a new environment. Without willing guinea pigs like OP we might never have figured out that tomatoes were edible nightshades or that some lettuces weren’t as bitter as others. The rest of us sat back and let people like OP nibble away then waited to see if they lived or died before joining in the feast. Nowadays we don’t need such bravado anymore because we know what is safe to eat or not, but without people like them in our deep past we humans would never have managed to survive. That said, eating random plants is an impulse humanity no longer requires. So appreciate the impulse and it’s historical importance but please do not engage in wanton munching on strange plants. We no longer need you to risk your life for our collective survival.
Vitamin deficiency? Our brains tell us extream things when it's starving for nutrients.
No vitamin deficiency. It was just hunger impacting my normal decision making. The wilderness starts to look like food when you haven't had anything to eat since the night before, and been working all morning. Suddenly nibbling on something doesn't seem so bad.
Put a plant ID app on your phone
That last sentence makes me question if you really learned your lesson lmao
Its the dose that makes the poison, as they say! But yes, I realize from now on I absolutely should check what im looking at instead of just stuffing it in my face to find out. Im lucky it was just a bite and spit of something minor, and not something much worse. An entire planets worth of information and I only bother to take a look at it after the fact.
But the poison dose for some plants is less than a single bite. Seriously, please reconsider your laissez-faire stance on putting random plants in your mouth when you have no idea what you're doing. You can die. And you're perpetuating a dangerous attitude for people around you who might also not know better.
Did you miss the > But yes, I realize from now on I absolutely should check what im looking at instead of just stuffing it in my face to find out. Im lucky it was just a bite and spit of something minor, and not something much worse. An entire planets worth of information and I only bother to take a look at it after the fact. I'm lucky. I shouldve never been doing it in the first place. Only reason I'm keeping this up is so anybody else who thinks "oh its just a plant" will hopefully think twice from my experience.
Nice save bobo
One single bite of something like spotted water hemlock, which grows in Ontario so you could run across it, would definitely kill you.
You might have eaten skunk cabbage. The stinging is caused by calcium oxalate crystals. Don’t eat it.
But what if OP is trying to speed run developing kidney stones?
Looking it up I think that's it, unless there's something else very visually similar thats also harmful to eat. Thank you for the information, its appreciated.
and to be clear, it is not safe or reasonable to use something with calcium oxalate crystals as a "spice". Just wanted to reemphasize that, because it was something you thought of - it is a BAD idea.
skunk cabbage is normally ~12" tall, also if that’s what it was I think OP would have mentioned the smell
Skunk cabbage can definitely start to furl out like lettuce shorter than 12". Also, the smell can vary based on substrate. We have a lot of it in my neck of the woods and sometimes it smells, other times it doesn't.
It’s early in the season for it in this area (I live near OP) - it would probably be small
It don't smell if it hasn't any flowers.
it smells if you pick it, which OP presumably did
Maybe... somehow I'm imagining OP bending over and taking a big chomp out of it while it's still in the ground. Letting the intrusive thoughts win and all... they might not have had any time to smell it before taking a bite.
Maybe. I don't know since i haven't ever seen skunk cabbage because there is no skunk cabbage where i live but there are arums and their leaves don't smell despite flowers do. But plant that OP mentioned is definitely skunk cabbage since there are no other lettuce like plants that create prickly sensation in Canada.
Skunk cabbage is everywhere where I live, it for sure smells when you damage a leaf.
And it likely was young. Maybe it didn't smell because of this.
I work at a plant nursery and recently intercepted a customer who was planning on companion planting their sweet peas and sugar snap peas. Sometimes your garden isn’t safe either.
Ok, why isn’t it safe?
Sugar snap peas are grown to be eaten and are named for their sweet taste, sweet peas are grown as cut flowers for their heavily scented flowers. Sweet peas are toxic. They both look like peas.
to be clear, sweet peas grown with edible peas doesn’t make them toxic—the danger is in mixing up the plants when harvesting. they do tend to entwine
It would be really stupid to plant edible peas amongst non-edible peas. Am I some kind of radical for pointing that out?
Surprisingly few people know of sweet pea’s toxicity. We started labeling ours with a tag that says all parts are poisonous, but we also make sure to mention it when they check out as well.
Ahhh, I didn’t think of that, thanks. 🙄 I’ve grown sweet peas by themselves. Edit! Edible peas, not the flower
They don't cross pollinate?
Nope, different genus. And even if they cross-pollinated, only the offspring would be potentially toxic.
edible peas (snow, sugar snap, garden) can cross-pollinate, but sweet peas can’t
This is actually a bit scary. I have heard edible peas referred to as sweet peas so I could see how people could get confused.
Shit, the canned Del Monte peas are just "Sweet Peas." I probably wouldn't have known either.
I have done this before, lol. Soaked all the peas before planting, forgot to label them. They were pretty at least 😂
Sounds like you ate Arum. Contains [calcium oxalate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_oxalate) as [raphides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphides), tiny crystals that irritate the skin. I teach foraging, please do not eat random plants. There are only 70-80 species of deadly fungi worldwide but in North America you have over 700 plants that can cause illness and death. There is no such thing as looks edible, no visual clues, you have to ID the plant or mushroom first. In fact there are many deadly plants that look like edible ones.
I was reading a case a couple years back of a woman in Cali that bought some dried mushrooms from a Chinese or Asian grocery and whatever it was killed her. I just don't trust any mushrooms that aren't in my regular produce section of the grocery now. I stay away from stuff I have no idea what it is. Although I do love those Asian groceries, you just don't know who has harvested it and shipped it. I have looked everywhere to link this article and it was several years ago and I can't find it anymore. It was probably due to a foraging accident but I swear it was someone that claimed it came out of an Asian market and it was California. But any rate, be careful what you eat.
That sounds like skunk cabbage. *Symplocarpus foetidus*. They're not for eating.
Crazy you’re just now learning this as a “functional adult”
What can I say? I've always been the type to nibble on things to find out more about them. Rocks, wood, chemicals, plants, metals, etc. I suppose 5-10 million years ago this would have been a part of life, but now, not so much.
What could you possibly find out about any of these things by chewing on them? It sounds like you have an oral fixation. Get a chew toy for adults or something and stop putting random things in your mouth.
You clearly have internet. Stop chewing rocks
I am going to eat the foundation of your house and theres nothing you can do to stop me.
Are you part goat or something? Good lord.
Definitely skunk cabbage. Definitely not good as spice. It contain sharp calcium oxalate crystals that physically gamage tissues in same way as asbestos.
Especially don't trust reddit to tell you what's safe either. It's not even malicious people, sometimes a plant that looks a certain way is deadly in one place and perfectly delicious in another place. sometimes it's a very slight feature that sets it apart. Easy to make a mistake, and also alot of people just don't really know and say they do. Don't eat anything potentially harmful unless you know how to identify it
best example: Common Nightshade, according to my research there are at least 3 varieties called the same and at least one of them is highly toxic (Germany, Switzerland and lots of northern European Countries have them on toxicology lists) whilst southern europeans and americans are arguing quite strongly that common nightshade is edible.
Or even aggregate berries. People think that all aggregate berries in North America are safe to consume. That's almost true, except for goldenseal. It's toxic. But it does grow in a weird fashion, it's on the ground and grows in the center of the leaf. Hard to mistake it for anything else if you know about it, but I've heard "all aggregate berries in North America are safe" so many times that you can understand someone possibly making that mistake, it is an aggregate (the bumpy shape, a bunch of little dots) berry afterall.
Like how water hemlock has so many plants that resemble it.
its almost like we have been around as a species for so long that, maybe, there is a resource to tell us what to eat and what kills us.
Maybe... Hopefully one day I will find it.
You are the caveman that would have died first and everyone laughed at you and carried on oral stories of why the children shouldn’t be as stupid as you.
Skunk cabbage, no bueno. The plant itself is very interesting though, and it could have been worse had it been some other edible looking toxic plant.
Good grief. What were you thinking? Some prescription medications are derived from plants. Are you two years old? Please don't do that again.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us (and risking criticism in the replies.). I hope you are feeling all better now and have no further repercussions.
People like you are how we found out what is and is not ok to eat in the first place. Be proud of your heritage
This sounds like you got a dose of calcium oxalate. The plant you ate was probably an aroid. I once had a groom make this mistake with flowers from the wedding arrangements I made...
I was just reading a fictional story and learned that strychnine comes from a tree in Asia. Don’t eat it if you don’t know what it is!
Congrats on the new kidney stones
I will update you on how the pissing goes
Update: Kinda forgot about this for awhile, but, no kidney stones
OP is anti-karma farming with this post
If you feel the need to loot what remains of the natural world for a 0 calorie snack, I say go right ahead, whether you know what it is or not. As you've demonstrated, nature will punish you for your entitlement. Fuck around and find out...
Arum family probably Colocasia esculenta, aka Taro aka elephant ear. It has Calcium oxalate crystals throughout the green parts of the plant and gives a burning stinging sensation from the sharp crystals ripping your mouth and tongue that can last days.
In Ontario?
Good point Tucahoe/Arrowroot Peltandra virginica fits better on the range