How can you tell if a plant is poisonous?
The best way to tell if a plant is poisonous is to check in books. Some parts of some plants are poisonous while other parts can be safely eaten. Some plants are poisonous to some animals and not others. Some plants eaten by Indigenous Australians (see Aboriginal bush foods) were poisonous and were only safe to eat after special preparation to remove the poisons. They probably found out by trial and error in the first place. These days a chemist could check the chemicals found in plants to see if they were safe to eat or not, but this would be a time-consuming and expensive process. Never eat any part of any plant unless you know it is not poisonous. What sort of plants give you rashes? Plants with irritating hairs or chemicals in their leaves give you rashes. An example of this type of plant is the Rhus or wax tree, which has beautiful orange leaves in autumn. It has been declared a noxious weed and must be removed from gardens because it causes rashes. Why don’t some trees lose their
