Spotted water hemlock: the most toxic plant in North America (2017)

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/spotted-water-hemlock-toxic-plant

by PaulHoule • 3 years ago

104 101 3 years ago

atlasobscura.com

waingake• 3 years ago

Sounds like it has the same effect on mammals as fly spray does on insects?

i.e death via full body convulsions

EA-31675• 3 years ago

It disrupts the nervous system, so in that sense it is similar. There is a fundamental difference in action though, pesticides (like most nerve agents) are based on a structure called an organophosphate (general structure O=P(OR)3 ). Most pesticides and nerve agents act on something called acetylcholine (ACh) or the enzyme that breaks it down, called acetylcholineesteraste (AChE). There are other classes though, such as sodium channel blockers, and in the case of water hemlock it's a bit strange.

No one is 100% sure just what the mechanism is, but it appears to have something to do with GABA. In particular cicutoxin (the active molecule) seems to hyper-excite the receptors involving GABA, which leads to seizures and death. It's interesting in that sense, it's much more violent than most nerve agents, for which the seizures and so on are just side-effects, not the lethal mechanism.

Traubenfuchs• 3 years ago

In particular cicutoxin (the active molecule) seems to hyper-excite the receptors involving GABA

Other way round. Cicutoxin is an ANTagonist to GABA receptors, pretty much the opposite of classical sleeping pills (benzodiazepines and z-drugs). As such, taking it is probably extremely similar to delirium tremens, the potentially deadly manifestation of alcohol, benzo or z-drug withdrawal after severe addiction. A horrid way to go.

Hyper excitation of GABA receptors would lead to coma and potentially death via cardiac arrest or pulmonary aspiration -if it happens, death by benzo overdose must be a truly gentle death, but rather unreliable even with extreme dosages I would assume.

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

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

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

aschla• 3 years ago

"Within the expansive Apiaceae family are some of the tastiest ... food plants in the world: ..., celery..."

Hmm, we have different tastes.

nsajko• 3 years ago

It's pretty big as a seasoning/spice.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

Tastes like soap. So, big for people who like soap.

MarkusWandel• 3 years ago

Is there some genetic condition that makes you hate the taste of pretty much all that plant family? I like a very slight anise flavour in cookies, and carrots are pretty versatile, but all of the others are on my "everybody but me loves them but you can ruin any dish with them" list.

supertofu5• 3 years ago

There must be. I posted a similar comment. I can't stand the taste of celery (tastes like grass and paint$ or cilantro (tastes like soap), and carrots also have a hint of soapy taste to my palate. Otherwise, I love all vegetables and cook often.

ianburrell• 3 years ago

Super tasters is genetic condition for heightened and different taste. Super tasters commonly have problem with coriander/cilantro having soapy taste. But could see more of the family being problem for some people. I wonder if carrots are fine because those eat the root and not the leaves.

CydeWeys3• 3 years ago

Celery is one of the main vegetables in mirepoix (an essential part of French and French-influenced cooking), soffritto (an essential part of Italian cooking used for most sauces), and is also used in many soups, stocks, and stews. I think you like it a lot more than you realize; you're just only thinking of eating it whole, raw.

bitshiftfaced• 3 years ago

Right, it's an "aromatic," and many dishes wouldn't taste right without it. Or, if you only ever eat dishes that don't call for it, I feel sorry for you.

EA-31675• 3 years ago

Even raw it can be lovely, very finely diced into something like egg or chicken salad. It adds a bit of savory crunch, a lightness and some of that aromatic zip.

Finely diced pickle can do the same thing though, for people who really hate celery.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

No, it fouls soups. I always know if there is a trace of it. As the other commenter remarked, lighter fluid. Or turpentine. It gets worse cooked.

rpmisms• 3 years ago

Celery has nice texture, not nice flavor.

janalsncm• 3 years ago

I used to think like this. It’s mainly because my only encounters with celery were teachers who thought celery and peanut butter was a good “snack” for kids. Gross.

But in cooking, it’s great. The purpose of celery is to break up the rush of flavor that sauce brings. For example in a stir fry, meat and rice tend to take on the flavor of the sauce (or even become enhanced by it). Celery does not. Sauce doesn’t stick to it. Celery adds dynamics to a dish by adding a pause to the flavor. And in the context of a mouth full of meat and sauce and rice and peppers, celery gives it all meaning by being none of that.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

Celery adds paint thinner to a dish.

I can't think of anything that is not better without paint thinner.

s0rce• 3 years ago

Its quite salty for a vegetable. Also try buying some from a chinese or farmers market and you'll find more strongly flavored celery than the generic grocery store stuff that is crunchy water

Grazester• 3 years ago

I eat it raw daily. I would say it's a developed taste but i liked it the moment I had it. My sibling on the other hand would not even eat a meal if celery was cooked with it.

jinpa_zangpo• 3 years ago

And prescribed in homeopathy under the name Cicuta Virosa.

(https://plankhomeopathy.com/blog/cicuta-virosa/)

zoky• 3 years ago

Well to be fair that’s literally just water…

macintux• 3 years ago

Homeopathic medicines are prepared by potentization where the dynamic curative power of the medication is aroused, so homeopathic medicines produce negligible side effects.

Well, that makes me feel better.

bigbillheck• 3 years ago

Good news, the regular effects are also negligible.

3-cheese-sundae• 3 years ago

Im guessing nobody dies from this, since 30C is water.

The catch is that they’re also without any benefit, and they’re poorer to boot.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

With less money to poison themselves with, then. Among those who don't know any better than to buy from homeopaths, that may make the difference.

mirekrusin• 3 years ago

Nice one.

Homeopathic snake oils are diluted so many times they pretty much guarantee there are no traces of original substance left (they believe the more times it is diluted, the more potent healing powers it gets). I think default is 30 times dilution, each time with ratio 1:100, so you're left with 1e-60 of original, so if you'd put all atoms from milky way (1e68) and start homeopathic them, you'd be left with number of atoms that make ie. a virus (influenza has roughly 1e8 atoms).

dylan6042• 3 years ago

I had no knowledge of snake oil terms, so I was confused by the "30C is just water". So after reading your comment, I had to go look it up and came across this [0] with description of the terms. For anyone else ignorant of snake oils ;-)

[0] https://homeosource.org/how-tos-for-homeopathy/what-does-hom...

Beijinger2• 3 years ago

This seems to be a relative of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium_maculatum

(spotted water hemlock vs poison hemlock)

This exists in Europe. Socrates used this plant to kill himself.

Never ever touch this plant. Don't ask me how I know this. :-(

brookst• 3 years ago

Sorry, but now I have to ask how you know this…

renewiltord2• 3 years ago

He's obviously Sacrotes, the AliExpress version, who ate spotted water hemlock instead of poison hemlock.

Beijinger2• 3 years ago

Hemlock and Sun make a nasty pie:

https://www.leben-und-erziehen.de/kind/gesundheit/riesenbaer...

littlestymaar• 3 years ago

This is discussed by the article:

There are toxic plants that may kill you but will be nice about it. “Poison hemlock is much better,” says “Wildman” Steve Brill, a New York based foraging expert and tour guide with an encyclopedic knowledge of the edible and not-so-edible plants of the Northeast. “You just stop breathing and your heart stops.” Socrates, when choosing death over a life in exile as an old man, chose poisoning by poison hemlock. It was a gentle death.
Poison hemlock is related to spotted water hemlock, but, um, only taxonomically, not in the way its poisons affect mammals. Here is Brill’s explanation of what happens when you eat spotted water hemlock:
Every single muscle starts firing and contracting, so you have convulsions, you chew your tongue into ribbons, you vomit but then you can’t open your mouth because the jaw muscles are contracting 10 or 20 times as hard as they normally do, and you die a horrible death

anonreeeeplor2• 3 years ago

Which one. Both?

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

Socrates used regular poison hemlock. He would have recommended not using spotted water hemlock for anything but on his political enemies, who had a point.

throwbadubadu• 3 years ago

Though the effects of both poisons couldn't differ more.. gentle death one might choose in certain circumstances vs death you wouldn't even wish your worst enemy.

Recommend reading the article, not only because of this detail and that your "seems" would have become certainty before posting, it has even more nice points ;)

sudobash1• 3 years ago

The article mentions that spotted water hemlock is not particularly common, but unfortunately the same cannot be said for poison hemlock. It is a omnipresent weed around here (Pacific Northwest). And it remains poisonous for years after it dies, which makes disposal a problem. This also is a huge issue if it gets into a hay-field. I have heard that some people have tried to burn it, with very poor results.

Also, in this terrible plant family is Cow-Parsnip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_maximum. If touched, it causes your skin to be excessively sensitive to the sun. It is basically reverse-sunscreen.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

Let us pass silently over hogweed.

dilyevsky• 3 years ago

There’s also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_(plant) from the same family (carrots). If you touch it and go in the sun you get crazy sunburns. It is an invasive species common in eastern europe (ukraine, russia) where it grows out of control and apparently has been detected in 16 states here

penguin_booze• 3 years ago

Semi-serious question: can I keep a poison hemlock as pet, just in case I need it in the future? I.e., are there laws around growing the plant, just like it'd be for marijuana?

Also, are there more details on Socrates' intake of the said plant--any particular recipe or precautions?

renewiltord2• 3 years ago

Interesting that it doesn't use the normal advertisements of danger (bright red colour, bad taste, etc.). Instead the thing looks harmless, tastes nice, and kills mammals at a small dose. I suppose it works to protect from anything that herds since killing one is sufficient to keep the herd away.

anonreeeeplor2• 3 years ago

Are cows smart enough to do a post mortem on who ate what random plant three hours ago?

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

Their ancestors were smart enough to stay out of that particular thicket, afterward.

Typically they have dug up and eaten the tasty-smelling tuber. The most daring cow chowed it while the others goggled, and remembered the smell forever after.

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

Evolution has amazing power to change behaviors in inexplicable ways. Sudden reliable death at small doses is a fairly powerful evolutionary pressure.

woleium2• 3 years ago

The ring of convulsing and dead is a bit disconcerting…

at_a_remove• 3 years ago

One would think so, but ...

I was on one of those investigative rabbitholes and stopped in at various rodent traps. One of the antiques was this contraption with eight holes, in a line, in which rats could stick their heads and be swiftly killed via your basic spring-loaded spinal injury.

Anyway, you could have seven dead or dying rats, heads in, and another rat would clamber over the victims, both the twitching and the finally-still, just to stick its head in the only open hole. The presence of kin corpses and dying nestmates was an insufficient deterrent.

gumby• 3 years ago

Australia has entered the chat with the Gympie Gympie:

https://www.newsweek.com/world-most-dangerous-shrub-suicide-...

whalesalad• 3 years ago

Funny - I was just picking a ton of these out of my yard last summer. They smelled like carrots, which I found interesting. I researched them at that time and realized they were indeed known as a "wild carrot"

gregwebs• 3 years ago

That is probably a different plant also known as Queen Anne's Lace, which is an edible wild carrot that is invasive and everywhere in the midwest and harmless. It is unfortunate that the two look similar. Queen Anne's Lace thrives in dry conditions whereas spotted water hemlock as the name implies grows in damp conditions.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

I saw a great deal of Queen Anne's Lace even in mid-northern Finnland.

The most easily-spotted difference is that the flower bunch of QAL is flat. On spotted water hemlock, it is smaller bunches splayed out.

_visgean• 3 years ago

There are many reports of the spotted water hemlock’s use as a suicide tool among the Iroquois nation; the most commonly cited occasion is upon the discovery of marital infidelity. There are plenty of other ways to take your own life; the spotted water hemlock is specifically chosen because it causes the most horrible, painful death possible.

why would they go for the most painful death possible?

orenlindsey• 3 years ago

People didn't always do certain things (like committing suicide) the easy way, they often did them in the most dramatic way possible. This was generally true up until around the Industrial Revolution.

Jun82• 3 years ago

They could be forced into taking it. Or they may choose the painful death to erase the shame of the infidelity, similar to how seppuku was sometimes done.

CydeWeys3• 3 years ago

To make the person who wronged you feel extra guilty and disgraced in the eyes of the community.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

In the news quite recently a woman doused herself with gasoline and lit it in protest over wholesale Gaza slaughter. She does not seem to have slowed the process.

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

Probably the best-known example of self-immolation as protest took place a full 10 years before the government it was protesting collapsed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%9...

MichaelRo2• 3 years ago

I don't eat stuff that I don't totally, 100% know and trust. Wild shit, never.

There's this fascination of people towards eating exotic stuff (defined as "non domesticated plants"), like wild garlic (Allium Ursinum), I see people selling leaves at the market. A slight mistake and they're buying Lily Of The Valley which looks very similar but will kill you.

Or wild mushroom people. I'm not touching wild mushrooms with a barge pole, couldn't give a s*it what experts say and how great they taste. I'd rather eat bread and water and stay alive than risk kidney failure and agonizing death.

I guess people are curious on experiencing interesting tastes but as they say "curiosity killed the cat".

jimbob452• 3 years ago

In fairness, there’s a method to eating exotic plants that isn’t just “ram it down the hatch”. You smell, look, and feel for anything that seems off-putting. You touch it to your tongue and wait 30 minutes to see if anything happens. You make sure you’re within range of EMS with people around. You eat a very small bite to begin with.

But yeah, unironically please don’t eat exotic plants I don’t want anyone to die for a silly reason.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

We have this method nowadays not so available to our recent ancestors, "look it up". Do that one first.

Modified3019• 3 years ago

It misses the step of crushing it and applying it to a patch of sensitive skin and waiting days waiting for rash or boils to show up, which comes before putting it in the mouth.

That said, these sort of strategies are for actual explorers living off the land, not people that have all human knowledge beamed to their phone.

MichaelRo2• 3 years ago

Isn't this method failing with the most toxic of mushrooms? "Death caps (Amanita phalloides) have been reported to taste pleasant.This, coupled with the delay in the appearance of symptoms—during which time internal organs are being severely, sometimes irreparably, damaged—makes them particularly dangerous."

So funk that, unless some life or death situation like facing starvation, there's a zillion things to eat and taste without the need to try what I don't know for sure.

angiosperm17• 3 years ago

The South American tapir eats toxic plants all day long

But only one leaf off of each, and then eats kaolin clay.

Jun82• 3 years ago

The tapir is wise as was Mithridates, as told by Housman:

  There was a king reigned in the East:
  There, when kings will sit to feast,
  They get their fill before they think
  With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
  He gathered all the springs to birth
  From the many-venomed earth;
  First a little, thence to more,
  He sampled all her killing store;
  And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
  Sate the king when healths went round.
  They put arsenic in his meat
  And stared aghast to watch him eat;
  They poured strychnine in his cup
  And shook to see him drink it up:
  They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
  Them it was their poison hurt.

  I tell the tale that I heard told.
  Mithridates, he died old.

julianeon• 3 years ago

There are quite a few plants which can kill you but it's probably better that they're not widely known. I knew a guy who worked as an ER doc and he talked about how in Sri Lanka there was a widely known and common plant which could kill you, and people overdosed on it regularly (suicide attempts).

tptacek• 3 years ago

Somewhere in the Cooking Issues archive there's a Dave Arnold rant about how dangerous foraging apiaceae (I remember him referring to them as umbillifers, or maybe less accurately as umbillaceae, which I found memorable because it describes the shape of the plant vividly) is --- because there's delicious stuff there but also some of the more widespread umbillifers can straight up kill you.

dang• 3 years ago

Spotted water hemlock is the most toxic plant in North America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22631069 - March 2020 (59 comments)

Spotted water hemlock: the most toxic plant in North America (2017)

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