10 Dangerous Plants You Shouldn’t Eat

Here at Epic Gardening, our focus is usually on plants you can eat without any consequences. But every now and then, it’s worth looking at the wider world of plants, including those that can cause serious harm (or worse) if ingested.

Some of the dangerous plants on this list are incredibly rare, while others are more common than you’d expect. Either way, we hope the only time you ever encounter them is on this page.

White Snakeroot

Also known as tall boneset or white sanicle, white snakeroot is a native North American plant with white flowers that release small seeds into the wind once they bloom. It’s one of the most historically significant dangerous plants in the country, and the way it kills is unusual.

White snakeroot is filled with tremetol, which doesn’t poison humans directly. Instead, animals like cows eat the plant and absorb tremetol into their meat and milk. When we consume those products, tremetol enters our bodies and causes a condition called milk sickness — a deceptively mild name for something that’s often fatal. Abraham Lincoln’s mother is believed to have died from it.

Doll’s Eyes

This unsettling-looking plant (also known as white baneberry) is native to the northeastern regions of North America. The name makes sense the moment you see it — the fruits look like small eyeballs on red stalks, which is as creepy as it sounds.

The entire plant is toxic to humans, but the fruit is the most dangerous part. The berries have a sweet taste that can trick children into eating them, which is especially concerning because ingesting them can sedate the cardiac muscles, potentially causing death very quickly.

Angel’s Trumpets

Angel’s trumpets are native to South America and are undeniably beautiful. The flowers can be pink, yellow, orange, or white, and they’re commonly grown as ornamentals in warm climates. But the entire plant is filled with toxins (including scopolamine and atropine), making it one of the more deceptive dangerous plants on this list.

That said, angel’s trumpets aren’t as immediately lethal as some of the other plants here. Some cultures have historically brewed the flowers into a hallucinogenic tea, though doing so is extremely risky because toxin levels vary significantly from plant to plant.

Strychnine Tree

Most people know this tree as quaker button or poison nut. It’s an average-sized tree commonly found in Southeast Asia and India. Inside the fruit are highly toxic seeds filled with strychnine and brucine.

A dose as small as 30 mg of either toxin is enough to kill a fully grown adult. And unlike some toxic plants where death comes quietly, strychnine poisoning causes violent, uncontrollable convulsions. It’s one of the most painful ways a plant can kill.

English Yew

This small to medium tree is native to Southwest Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe (so roughly half the planet). The only part of the tree that isn’t toxic is the fleshy berry that surrounds the seed. Birds eat the berries and spread the seeds without harm, but humans aren’t so lucky.

About 50 grams of the seeds can cause difficulty breathing, convulsions, tremors, and collapse. Death typically comes from cardiac arrest. The English yew is a good reminder that some of the most dangerous plants in the world are also some of the most common.

Water Hemlock

Hemlock has been known as a poisonous plant for thousands of years, but water hemlock is a different species entirely. Also called poison parsnip, it’s native to temperate regions of the northern hemisphere and is easy to identify by its small green and white flowers that cluster in umbrella-like shapes.

Water hemlock holds the title of the most poisonous plant in North America. It’s filled with cicutoxin, which causes violent seizures, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Death can follow within hours from respiratory failure or ventricular fibrillation. The roots are the most toxic part of the plant, so avoid them at all costs.

Wolfsbane

Wolfsbane goes by several names: leopard’s bane, devil’s helmet, and woman’s bane among them. It belongs to the buttercup family, though it’s far deadlier than its more pleasant relatives. It’s native to mountain regions in the northern hemisphere.

The plant is full of alkaloid pseudaconitine, which was used in ancient Japan as a poison for hunting. If ingested, it causes a burning sensation in the limbs and abdomen. Consuming too much (usually around 20 ml) can be fatal within two to six hours.

Rosary Pea

The rosary pea (also known as jumbie bead or crab’s eye) is a climbing plant that grows around other trees and shrubs. It’s most commonly found in Indonesia, though it has turned up in other parts of the world as well.

The seeds are sometimes used as beads, but they also contain abrin, a toxin very similar to ricin. The key difference is potency. Abrin is roughly 75 times stronger than ricin, meaning even a few micrograms can be lethal. It’s one of the most concentrated dangerous plants in existence.​

Belladonna

The names alone should tell you something: death cherries, deadly nightshade, devil’s berries. Belladonna is found across Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and it contains tropane alkaloids, one of the most potent plant toxins known.

Symptoms of ingestion include loss of voice, dry mouth, headaches, and eventually difficulty breathing. The berries have the lowest concentration of the toxin but taste sweet, which makes them especially dangerous to children. It takes roughly ten to 20 berries to kill an adult — or a single leaf.

Castor Plants

Castor plants contain ricin, the toxin we mentioned alongside abrin in the rosary pea section. Ricin is less potent than abrin, but that’s a relative statement. A single castor seed contains enough ricin to kill a person within about 48 hours.

The process is slow and painful. It starts with a burning sensation in the throat and mouth, progresses to stomach pain and vomiting, and eventually leads to severe dehydration. The castor plant currently holds the Guinness World Record for the most poisonous plant on Earth, which puts it at the top of any list of dangerous plants.