9 Poisonous Plants You Might Own

Plants can be beautiful, provide oxygen and improve your mental health, but some of your favorite houseplants might actually be super toxic. Join Stefan Chin for a new episode of SciShow, and learn about the potential dangers that might be hiding in your plants!
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[Love_Lei_Xo]

My brother got me to eat some leafs off of one of my moms house plants when I was 4. My tongue swelled, closing up my airway. Luckily we lived about 5 minutes drive time to the hospital.
Needless too say, I never trusted my brother from there on out.

[Master_Therion]

This is great information! Thanks. I feel like I just graduated from a Poison Ivy League school.

[TommoCarroll]

Ah yes. Give a man a plant leaf salad, feed him for a day. Give a man a *poison* plant leaf salad, feed him for a lifetime. 🌿🤔😐



So really we should all grow poison plants....right? Right!?

[icoele]

"Never eat mystery road honey" is one of my new favorite quotes

[ThisOldSkater]

A video about very toxic plants that look like food would be interesting.

[musclehank]

oh yeah, I grow these in my garden to eat so my digestive system and immune system get a nice workout trying to expel poisons

[aikiemarais]

A while back my daughter and her kids visited us and my daughter realized that my granddaughter's pupils are differently dilated. She immediately phoned her doctor to find out what it could be. In the meantime, kids being kids, my grandchild went on with her life. After a while she came in with a flower she picked at home and I immediately identified it as an Angel's Trumpet.
Whether she ingested the poison through her skin or maybe licked her fingers, that was identified as the culprit.

[seashell]

The most common house plants are plastic. Don't eat those either.

[eclairlu]

“Moral of the story is: Never eat mysterious road honey” XD XD

[Lovehandels]

I love Lilly of the valley! They are my favorite flowers! I grew up with them and loved to smell them thank goodness I never thought to eat any o.o

[Palitato]

I have a health condition that means my heart beats WAY too fast, because my blood vessels don't constrict properly when I stand up... so having something that slowed my heart rate but also made it beat more strongly would be good for me. xD

SO BROKEN I'M BACKWARDS. Feed me poison and I get all better, lol. xD

(I'm kidding. Don't feed me poison. I don't want those other side effects...))

Also if you guys did a show about POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) I would love it. So many people don't understand it and I'd love to be able to point them at a scientific video to explain it all.

[sydneysvoboda]

Wait so. My dad just bought bees to make our own honey and our yard is FULL of rhododendrons. AM I GOING TO DIE

[sophiejune]

I think we grew 3 of these poisonous flowers in our gardens when I was a kid. I didn't know they were poisonous and I never had any interest in eating them. The only flowers I wanted to eat as a kid were roses. So I guess I have good instincts.

[kabuyogi]

Here in Nepal, RHODODENDRON is the national flower and considered medicine too. So we actually eat the rhododendron flowers. I myself have eaten many of them during their flowering season and was completely fine. 🙃

[bramblechaser]

Oleanders are one of my favorite flowers of all time. Not only are they very beautiful but honestly what drew me to them was the fact that every part of the plant is poisonous.

[Lydianos]

Greetings. Great video. Greek guy here 😊. Dolmades are made from grape leaves. It is a traditional constantinopolian dish coming from the Greeks that lived there. I have never heard about cyclamin leaves in this dish, all Greeks use grape leaves, and I assure you it tastes amazing!

[terryenby]

Hydrangeas tell you the acidity of your soil too :) they grow more purple and pink depending upon the content of their soil (no I don’t know which is which, look it up yourself or something ;) ) some people use this to their advantage and use different types of fertiliser/food to create shrubs that have different shades of flowers. It’s a wonderful effect!!

[pierreabbat]

"Sago palm" is the name for two plants, unrelated to each other. Metroxylon sagu is a palm; Cycas revoluta is a cycad. The first people I read about who eat sago are the Sawi of lowland New Guinea, where Metroxylon grows.

[Quithus]

"Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it."
"But a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it."

[ananananabop]

Plants are amazing. I did not know a lot of these common household plants were so highly toxic. Great video, and clear explanation on what each toxin does.