Hey welcome to UK Wildcrafts. So if you're learning to forage for wild edibles then it's
just as important if not more important to learn the poisonous species out there so you don't go
hurting yourself so here are some of the most poisonous plant species in the UK part 1. This
is dogs mercury or Mercurialis perennis it's very common and can be found carpeting woodland floors.
The leaves are oval and pointed and serrated and they grow in opposing pairs the easiest
way to identify as if you give the leaves a bit of a rub you'll feel they've got a downy fur on
them and also the flower spikes don't actually have any petals on them it's just seed pods
These are very poisonous and can be fatal if you accidentally eat them.
This is hemlock water dropwort and this is the most deadly plant in the UK so definitely stay
away from this one you can see where the leaves are separated into either twos or
fours and each leaf shape kind of takes a triangular appearance these usually grow by
waterways either lakes or rivers but they can grow inland as well just a couple of mouthfuls
of this or even just a few leaves will choke up your respiratory system and you'll die of
asphyxiation so this is definitely not one to mix up generally I don't pick any umbelifers
from near water just to make sure I'm not picking this that includes your hogweeds cow Parsley's
just don't mess with them near water. This is the Arum Lily (Arum maculatum) it's also known
as lords and ladies and cuckoo pint. The leaves normally appear around January and
the younger ones can be mistaken for sorrel the only different is sorrel has more pointed lobes
like arrow points and the arum has rounded lobes although that's not really enough to identify it,
another way is if you pick one of the leaves and hold it up to the light probably can't
see it on camera but it has a border of a white vein running around a few centimeters from the
edge of the leaf and all of the veins stop at that point whereas with sorrel the veins go all
the way to the end of the leaf, there you can see that better now. These are very common especially
in woodlands and around hedgerows all parts of the plant are poisonous especially the berries,
the berries usually appear around May and they grow in tall red spikes. This is a yew tree (Taxus
baccata) they grow quite big and are very common in Woodlands you could potentially mistake one for
pine but the yew needles are opposite and they grow in a flat plane and the needles are a lot
shorter than the Scots pine. So people have made mistakes of making what they thought was pine tea
with these needles and it can be fatal, so all parts of this tree are poisonous apart from the
flesh of the berries or arils and yeah you can eat the berries but at your own risk because
if you eat them you have to make sure you spit out the stone or seed in the middle because that
is poisonous. It's a weird texture they're quite slimy but I actually quite like them but it's not
really worth risking there's much better things to eat without getting the risk of poisoning yourself