The Puppy versus Pretty and Poisonous

Garden centres everywhere (well, around the prairies) will be opening their doors to the public in the next week or so. As a result, there will be a dramatic in new plant acquisitions in yards and gardens across the region. People that love indoor plants, as well as those that are following the trends will also potentially add one or more interesting indoor houseplants. It’s a great time of year.

Over the years, I’ve had a revolving door of “favourite” flowers and plants. I suppose that now that I am more “experienced” or “chronologically enhanced” I have adopted the position best described by my wife “Favourites are for children…”. I have now accepted that I like lots of different plants for the different and unique characteristics that they each offer, as well as the memories that I associate with each of them.

Some of my preferred flowers include Rudbeckia, Osteospermum, Monkshood, Pansies, Sweet Peas, Black-eyed Susan, Tulips, Asiatic lilies, Iceland Poppies, Columbines, and Lupins. I’ve popped these and others into my garden beds on and off over the years. I’ve had to make choices on plants based on how well they’ll grow in the various spaces in my yards, and I’ve had some hits and misses. Overall, I’ve been quite happy when they established and flowered. I’ve collected seeds and made divisions from some, to share with friends and family and neighbours. It’s enjoyable and rewarding.

However, in the past year or two, I’ve introduced a new factor that has trumped all of the other decision-making factors. A family dog. For years, I resisted having a dog, based largely upon the fact that I suffer from pet allergies, and a general lack of space. We had a couple of different beta fish, followed by a used hedgehog, but nothing that you really had to worry about much, certainly not with respect to my plant choices. We didn’t tend to have many houseplants. As my 4 kids grew older, they became somewhat more aware of the different properties of the plants that surrounded them. When they discovered that one of my favourites was, in fact, poisonous, they were quite indignant and insisted that all Monkshoods be removed from the yard “for their safety”. I refused and planted a couple more, essentially telling them “You know what it looks like, just don’t touch it if it bothers you.”

But, with the dog, he is essentially immune to such instructions and logic. He likes to munch grass and leaves and plant parts, so much so that sometimes we call him Bessie the Cow. When the plan was decided upon that we would be getting a dog, I had to consider the fact that some of the plants that I love might harm him, inadvertently, so I removed them. But having this animal take his place in our home has raised an awareness of the potential risks of different plants that I have planted or might plant. I suspect that whenever grandchildren start to appear, this will continue to take a higher priority. In most cases, education and instruction will be sufficient, whereas with pets, you have to choose which you like more, fluff or foliage.

Poisonous Plants

Many of the plants that we love have the potential to cause us some harm. Some plants are entirely edible, except for specific plant parts at specific growth stages. Some plants are fine to consume or handle, other than the leaves, or the roots or bulbs, or some immature plant part. Some plants will cause a skin reaction on contact, whereas others must be eaten to cause issues. In many cases, you’d have to really manhandle and consume a lot of the plant parts to get really ill, but it varies from plant to plant.

It also varies from person to person and species to species. Some plants are completely fine for humans but will cause illness or injury to different species of animal. Some are fine around animals, but humans are sensitive. Some humans are more sensitive than others. It can be quite complicated, but I feel that awareness is better than nothing, so I did a bit of digging and found a few common examples, as well as some good reference links that I often refer to when looking for information on poisonous plants.

Three Important Points

Before diving into determining whether something is poisonous or not, there are three important points to highlight and present for consideration.

First, it is critical to correctly identify plants. Some plants are pretty consistent across Genus or even Family, but lots of them differ from species to species. To correctly identify plants, you are going to have to rely on the Latin or botanical name, not just a common name. Most plants have many different common names, which can lead to confusion.

Second, whether something is poisonous or not is not an entirely exact science. There are many variations in a plant’s degree of poisonousness which are influenced by many different factors, including plant growth stage, plant size, plant part, sensitivity of affected organism, amount, and duration of exposure, etc. You get the idea, I hope.

Third, there aren’t hard and fast restrictions on poisonous plants, or at least plants that have poisonous potential. As far as I know, there isn’t anything saying that you can’t grow a plant that has poisonous plant parts (unless it is also a recognized weed or invasive species). You, as an individual, set the level of acceptable risk for your specific situation.

Some poisonous examples

As I mentioned, the criteria that determine whether something is (acceptably) poisonous or not is very dependent on you and your specific situation. The following are some examples of plants that are fairly common or well-known (at least to me), as well as whether they are poisonous to humans, cats, and dogs.

Please note that all the plants listed are poisonous to humans in some way, unless noted. You have to dig deeper to find out what parts are poisonous and why they might be considered poisonous. Sometimes poisonous means causing a change in health (like an allergic reaction), not causing death or sickness.

FYI, this is NOT A COMPREHENSIVE LIST. I have narrowed down the plants to ones that were listed for Alberta or the Canadian Prairies or the location didn’t matter (e.g., indoors). The list is longer when you look across Canada.

I would advise you to take a closer look at each, if relevant (using the reference materials I provide), to determine which plant parts are toxic and how they might affect you and your furry family. I’m going to assume that some of these will surprise you.

Resources

This is generally my go-to reference for poisonous plants in Canada. You can filter the lists by common or Latin/botanical name, organism (e.g., human, horse, etc.), or other characteristics.

Canadian Poisonous Plant Information System

Here are a couple of other links that you might find useful.

https://www.fda.gov/food/science-research-food/fda-poisonous-plant-database

https://www.poison.org/articles/plant%20

https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/toxic-and-non-toxic-plants

A number of years ago, I came across a really interesting book that had a bit of a dark side to it. If you can find a copy and want to take a bit of a humorous wander through the history and world of poisonous plants, you will want to read “Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities” by Amy Stewart. It is epic and entertaining.

As a part of my Homegrown Horticulture series, I put together a short 1-pager summarizing some of this. You can find a PDF of the document in the Homegrown Hort section of my website.