Important Plant notice from WebMD

Those grow a lot of places here, the Danish name for them are "Bjørneklo / bear claw"
There are even a national plan to fight them as they have become quite proliferated, same goes for some thorny bushes that are taking over a lot of beaches

At least its not gympie gympie we got.


Personally i think our politicians should be thrown naked into a thicket of gympie gympie :devilish:
 
Lola said:
This thing is down right scary!
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It's a scary article, but the plant isn't actually poisonous, there are many common plants that are far more dangerous!
It just that if it touches your skin then it causes severe sunburn on that part of the skin for the next 7 years.

Other members of the family are very good to eat, including Common Hogweed and Parsnip, although it is still wise to wear gloves when harvesting them.
http://www.wildfooduk.com/articles/giant-hogweed-and-common-hogweed/
 
Soup made on stinging nettles, which you can harvest bare handed but still glover are cheap and better safe than sorry.


Never tried as i am pretty conservative in what i eat, which makein visiting Japan and other exotic places a little of a problem.
 
I had an experience last year with 'just' poison ivy that convinced me to rubber up before dealing with such things again.
Interestingly, as the CO2 level has increased poison ivy becomes more prolific. I now see PI in places in the yard not usually conducive to it.
My exposure required a steroid shot at the doctors office plus oral steroids for a week. While I did feel 'pumped', the itchy consequences were quite bothersome.
It took a month for the scars to fade.
 
kamkar1 said:
Soup made on stinging nettles, which you can harvest bare handed but still glover are cheap and better safe than sorry.


Never tried as i am pretty conservative in what i eat, which makein visiting Japan and other exotic places a little of a problem.
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I've never fancied nettles, but they are not poisonous, while some plants you do eat are poisonous. Potatoes put people in hospital if they are not stored correctly - don't eat them if the skins have gone green, and tomatoes are very poisonous if you eat the wrong part of the plant.
 
Giant hogweed grows in my area, in particular in a nature reserve near the school I went to.

Apparently if you cut off a piece of the stem it's hollow and makes a great pea shooter. But the fun doesn't last long.

Edit > There's a map of UK sightings of the plant. I'm inside one of the red dots where it has been seen since 2010.



Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk
c901bca4e9b981b1a673850781b65fad.jpg
 
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jokiin said:
wow, that's pretty intense, we have a bunch of animals and insects here that can kill you but nothing as severe as this from plants
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Some people refer to it as the "nightmare plant" and it can grow to 4 meters tall. The nightmare aspect is, in part, because it's an invasive species that is spreading rapidly across parts of the US. Supposedly, it's bad enough if you just brush up against it but this poor kid literally grabbed it and chopped it down as part of a landscaping job. The sap of these plants is like the blood of a fu*king Xenomorph!
 
Many places it look like this here.

kaempe-bjoerneklo-skov.jpg


1000 plants are considered a little infestation - large = 10.000 plants and really large over 100.000 plants.

A quick readup teach me it take about 1 - 5 years to clean a patch, you can cut them down with hand tools, machines are not advised.
Covering a growth area with a membrane will kill off 98 - 99 % of plants there, the reproductive area of the plant are in the upper part of the root.

Another pest as mentioned are "hyben" or Rose hip that have taken hold in may places, these are harder to remove but you can use machines on them as they are only thorny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_hip


You have to plow the Rose hip every year for 2 - 3 years before the remaining rootsystem are so tortured it might die off.
 
jokiin said:
wow, that's pretty intense, we have a bunch of animals and insects here that can kill you but nothing as severe as this from plants
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It doesn't kill! Just causes very bad sunburn if your skin is also exposed to sunlight. The image above looks worse than reality due to the skin being covered in some sort of gell.

Dashmellow said:
Some people refer to it as the "nightmare plant" and it can grow to 4 meters tall...
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Doesn't start growing until March, it can be 5 meters tall by August! By winter there are just dead stems visible, plus 50,000 seeds to create new plants.
 
Nigel said:
It doesn't kill! Just causes very bad sunburn if your skin is also exposed to sunlight. The image above looks worse than reality due to the skin being covered in some sort of gell.


Doesn't start growing until March, it can be 5 meters tall by August! By winter there are just dead stems visible, plus 50,000 seeds to create new plants.
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With or without the gel, that kid looks like he will be scarred for life and is likely in a great deal of pain. And, yes, severe burns like that can kill, which is why the boy is in the Burn ICU. It's oddly troubling that you keep minimizing the serious hazards of this plant.

It's always amusing to note that your comments and frame of reference on most any subject always reflect only the provincial perspective of what you experience in the UK . Here in the US, Giant Hogweed happens to grow in much of the southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, including Virginia where the boy was injured. There, in the milder climate, seasonal growing issues like you are referring to are more or less irrelevant.
 
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We played among then as a kid, even chopped some down with knifes, and i cant recall anyone getting hurt by them.

But thats just a fact for me, other ones have been unlucky on a bicycle and crashed into those damn things and gotten really bad off.
This guy helped his father in law get rid of some of them, wearing protective gear and rubber gloves, and he dident notice a thing here, but a few days later upon arriving on Corsica in Italy at once he exploded in blisters so bad he dripped on the airport floor, and upon arriving to the hotel he spent 4 hours under a cold shower as that was the only place he could bare to be.

No%20name


No doubt they are nasty suckers, and one do well in teaching one self and children to respect those damn things.
 
Dashmellow said:
7/12/18 - Giant hogweed severely burns Virginia teen, 17, sending him to hospital, report says

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2018/...y-17-sending-him-to-hospital-report-says.html

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/...t-With-Poisonous-Hogweed-Plant-488046861.html

View attachment 40000
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I found a plant of it growing next to my trash can, I poisoned it with weed killer that kills the plant and roots, didn't want to take a chance with just burning it because I don't know if it is like poison ivy and breathing in the smoke of it burning can get into ones lungs (seen that happen) when I was a kid to a girl in my school! They did say something about the sap being really bad!
One look at that young man in your picture tells me NOT to mess around with it. In the article it said it could cause blindness, that has put it on my KILL list.

BTW, as a teenager I didn't catch poison ivy, maybe just a little between my fingers! Haven't had any direct connection since then to find out and don't plan to have any either!
 
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Lola said:
I found a plant of it growing next to my trash can, I poisoned it with weed killer that kills the plant and roots, didn't want to take a chance with just burning it because I don't know if it is like poison ivy and breathing in the smoke of it burning can get into ones lungs (seen that happen) when I was a kid to a girl in my school! They did say something about the sap being really bad!
One look at that young man in your picture tells me NOT to mess around with it.
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Yeah, you REALLY don't want to mess with this stuff!!

hogweed_victim1.jpg

hogweed_victim2.jpg
 
Popping those and put it on youtube will get you 200.000 views at least ( weird world views )
 
I will still argue the Aussie gympie gympie are worse, it will kill you with shear unadulterated pain and what your body do to deal with that, i mean just look at the guy in the video above he let it touch a little area of one finger and within no time he is puking in agony.
https://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-touch-a-gympie-gympie-plant

As i understand it the "bear claw" dont really do anything major to you before you add sunshine..

First aid =

Quickly wash sap off with water and soap, remove clothes, skin cells are killed by contact with the sap and it can take up to 1/2 year before the skin look normal.

protect skin exposed against sunshine for at least a week by covering it or remain indoor.

Sun lotion with > factor 15 and without para aminobenzoic acid can be used for protection, exposed areas of skin are treated like a regular burn wound.

The plant came here 150 years ago as a exotic garden plant originating in the Caucasus region.
 
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kamkar1 said:
I will still argue the Aussie gympie gympie are worse, it will kill you with shear unadulterated pain...
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We do have plants that genuinely kill, such as the Death cap ("The most deadly fungus known and is common in England. It’s responsible for most fatal mushroom poisonings worldwide. Ingestion of just half a cap can lead to death, a liver transplant is often the only option to prevent death.") and Destroying angel ("A pure white, deadly poisonous mushroom. Apparently, just a piece of destroying angel in a soup made from otherwise edible species is enough to kill everyone who eats the soup.").

We have lots of plants that can kill, some of them very common such as the Yew Tree ("Yew trees are deadly poisonous to horses! They are so toxic that even chewing on a single branch can (and frequently does) cause INSTANT death."), but Giant Hogweed is not one of them.
 
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