The line between medicinal and poisonous plants is very thin. Sometimes the very thing that heals you can kill you if you consume too much of it. And that is as true of pharmaceuticals as it is for plants.
But over time, we have become convinced that a chemical synthesized in a lab is safer than a plant that grows in nature.
However, a trained herbalist knows how to use poisonous plants in the same way a doctor knows how many pills to tell you to take.
Always use extreme caution when dealing with poisonous plants because many, if used improperly, can cause death!
Related: 8 Edible Backyard Plants And Their Poisonous Lookalikes
Foxglove
Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, always comes to mind first when I think of poisonous medicinal plants (probably because I read a lot of murder mysteries when I was young). A common garden plant, foxgloves are grown for their beautiful flowers despite their deadly reputation.
All parts of the plant are toxic, and you can feel the effects even if you ingest just a small amount of the plant. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
However, the same toxic compounds can also be used medicinally. These compounds are called glycosides. The glycosides present in foxglove are called digitalis, after the Latin name of the plant.
Survival Uses
Traditionally foxglove was used to treat dropsy, now known as edema, a swelling condition related to cardiac problems. Nowadays, digitalis is still extracted from foxglove leaves and used to make heart medicine.
When SHTF and there aren’t any pharmacies or doctors, foxglove can be used with extreme caution to treat heart problems. While accidental death is uncommon, it is possible.
Related: Foxglove Utilized to Treat Heart Disease During the Civil War
Tansy
Tansy, Tanacetum vulgare, is another common garden plant with a nefarious reputation.
Featuring fragrant ferny leaves and bright yellow flowers, it is easy to see why tansy is popular. Like foxglove, it was once commonly used in herbal medicine to treat many ailments, including worms, nausea, and kidney problems. But over time, its toxic nature led people to look for safer choices.
While you can eat the leaves in small amounts, large amounts of tansy can be deadly, so use caution. The essential oil it contains is considered toxic.
However, medicinal tansy can be used externally for sprains and bruises or as an herbal wash. Simply brew an infusion of the leaves and flowers. You should always spot test with tansy first as it can cause skin irritation in people.
Medicinal Uses
Tansy should only be used externally. You can make a poultice with fresh tansy leaves to alleviate swelling from sprains and aid wound healing.
However, tansy can cause contact dermatitis so use caution and test a small area of the skin first.
Yellow Dock
Yellow Dock, Rumex crispus, also known as curly dock, is a common wild edible. People forage for leaves to eat and use the root medicinally. The root can be boiled and used to detox, treat liver ailments, and as a laxative.
But this useful plant has a dark side as well.
The leaves contain oxalic acid, which can be poisonous when consumed in large quantities. You can eat a few leaves raw, but you should cook them if you plan to eat more than a few.
Cooking will reduce the amount of oxalic acid in the leaves.
Consuming too much oxalic acid can lead to severe mineral deficiencies—especially a deficiency in calcium. Calcium deficiency can cause fatigue, seizures, and confusion.
Dock Infused Oil for Itching
- Fill a jar ¾ of the way with fresh, dry dock leaves. Make sure you use only healthy, undamaged leaves.
- Cover your leaves with a carrier oil, like olive, sesame, or coconut oil. Make sure your leaves are completely covered and close the jar.
- Leave the jar undisturbed in a sunny window for 4-6 weeks. Then strain the leaves and place the oil in a clean jar.
- You can apply the oil as is to relieve itching or add it to salves or balms.
Castor Beans
Castor Oil is a popular traditional remedy for constipation. Its antibiotic, antifungal qualities make the oil excellent at relieving skin irritations, acne, and fungal infections.
It also makes a wonderful oil choice for a base for medicinal salves and balms. But this magical oil comes from a deadly plant.
Castor oil comes from pressing the hulled beans of the castor plant, Ricinus communis. It is essential to remove the outer shell or hull of the bean before use.
The hull contains ricin, which is a deadly poison. Ricin is so toxic that it can kill an adult who has chewed as few as 1-6 beans!
Once you remove the shell, the beans are safe. However, castor oil should not be consumed for long periods of time as it can lead to a potassium deficiency. It should also be avoided by pregnant women unless they are full-term and looking to induce labor.
Castor Oil
- For constipation: Take ½ an ounce of castor oil to relieve constipation. You can mix the oil with juice to improve the flavor. You should notice the effects in about 2-3 hours though it may take as long as 6 hours. However, you should avoid taking castor oil before bed.
- For skin: You can apply castor oil topically to help alleviate a number of skin conditions. It can help with wound healing, acne, and moisturize your skin.
Related: How To Make Oil From Plants At Home
Stinging Nettles
Poison comes in many different forms, and not all of them are deadly.
Stinging Nettles, Urtica dioica, is a prime example of a non-deadly poisonous plant with many medicinal uses.
As the name suggests, when you touch these nettles, you experience contact dermatitis. Which is really just fancy for saying it gives you a rash.
But that means you don’t want to consume stinging nettle raw. Just imagine all those stinging hairs in your throat. When you cook the leaves, you neutralize all the toxins. Then you can add these nutritious leaves to your food or use them medicinally.
Nettles can help treat pain and inflammation, hay fever, lower blood pressure and blood sugar, and aid in healing wounds. You can simply add a cup of delicious nettle tea to your daily routine to get the health benefits of this poisonous plant.
Nettle Tea
- 1 cup of fresh nettles
- 2 cups of water
- Honey or another natural sweetener to taste
Boil two cups of water. Add the nettles. Allow the nettles to steep for between 5-15 minutes, depending on the strength you want. Strain the nettles. Add your sweetener. Then enjoy!
Final Thoughts
When dealing with any medicine, herbal or pharmaceutical, it is important to use caution. Often the line between potent and toxic is very thin. However, when used with care, these poisonous plants can be lifesaving.
Thorough knowledge of plant medicine will be essential in order to survive when SHTF. Without doctors and pharmacies, we will once again need to rely on what nature can provide for us.
Being able to identify common plants like yellow dock and stinging nettles can help you cope with common ailments. Learning to masterfully brew infusions of foxglove comes with time and study.
In the end, nature provides us with what we need to survive. We just need to be open enough to see it.
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Well it’s said that GOD has put everything here on earth for us to have a medical pantry of all natural products. GOD did that so we could heal our selves and have a life with out heath problums. It did work for a very long long time and some still practice the old ways of healing.
BUT then came stupid, someone said that you should not use that old ways any more,,,, FDA… they said we should use synthetic man made cures and drugs.. Don’t trust in GOD, man said trust in man. Trust in sience, piss on science. I say trust in GOD. Trust faith… not saying that all man made drugs or cures are bad but there has and is so much bad in man’s way BUT not one thang GOD has made is bad. NOT ONE!!!!
Don’t trust in man. Dam, just look at where we are by trusting in man’s way.
Greed dose not care about you or your family or GOD…
Your government says, just trust us, we care about YOU and YOUR safety. don’t worry you can trust, ‘satan.gov’…
If you trust man.gov then you deserve what you get. you are a sucker to think that they care about you. the ONLY thing they care about is “you being a slave for them”. O and just shut up and give your freedom up for safety.
NO WAY… I say screw y’all. who pays for every thing that .gov has. We the people pay the bill. But we have to work for the better of the slave master.gov… not for us but for them. bull shit..
we are no more then Whores. that support the pimps.gov… WHORES…
how dose it fill to pay some one.gov, to just screw the shit out of you. YOU payed for it. just like I did.
we the people, what a joke… should read we the SUCKERS. thats us america.
stop trusting them. big brother.gov.. is a demon in sheep’s clothing and WE have been feeding them our freedom and they want more and more. hell they want it all.
please trust in GODs way. He is the one that truly cares about you. look at what he has gave us, ALL WE NEED.
Dam sure WAS NOT the dam government.
there using fear to get y’all to fallow them strait in to hell and it’s working, good… lol
remember the FDA can’t make money on natural cures, only on fake drugs and cures. Thats why you never get well with .gov… but GOD never created you to be unhealthy. but man did… GREED CONTROL POWER. .gov.
good luck. lol…
Thank you…
I agree with a lot of what you say in your rant, I hate the Government, but there’s always going to be a Government and, just by their nature, Governments to a greater or lesser extent enslave most of the governed to protect the wealthy few. I was never rich enough to pay zero taxes but I always paid the least I could using means fair and foul. I don’t go to Western Drs or use their medicine and I’m friskier at 74 than most people under 40. But it saddens me that so many people with alternative views sound so angry, come across as desperate and sad. Our world is pretty much as it has been the past 250 years, it is always on the brink of change, sometimes the changes are sharp and if you are not prepared can hurt you bad. But I think a lot of us need to keep broadening our view and discover you don’t have to be bitter and angry, that here in America even the poor can lead a pretty kick ass life. Lighten up!
@ judge
not angry or bitter. just real dam tired of BULL shit people.
That’s my alternative view.
so just lightin up and you will be okay your self.
O and I’m very prepared for what ever change there may be.
Was not a rant, just bitching.and thanks for those encouraging words…
Regarding use of plants with oxalic acid, while simmering do not inhale the fumes. They too are poisonous.
Lots of oxalic acid in the leftover water, too. Add a teaspoon of calcium carbonate to greens when cooking, it neutralizes the acid even more. Good stuff that CACO3, use as an antacid, easiest way to raise the pH of your garden.
Judge: Good to know, thanks. A lot of what we eat contains oxalic acid but in small amounts that, we hope, don’t do any harm. niio
Red, a friend at my last location who was a chemist used to lay lime in his spinach beds when he planted them. He told me the lime and oxalic acid bound together, which increased the bioavailability of calcium in the spinach.
It was also the sweetest spinach i’ve ever eaten.
mlb: thank you, and I’ll pass it on to family up in the Swamps of Pennsylvania. Here, Arizona, we have the opposite problem. When digging the garden beds, I hit caliche (limestone) that was in some cases a yard thick. Anything we plant must tolerate a Ph 8+ soil. We have for summer greens, Tarahumara amaranth, Red Merlot, and prickly (native wild variety). All self-sow and all make good grain.
Today, I sulfured the garden, which converts inch by inch, caliche to gypsum, breaking up the calcium enough that eventually plants can root in it. since we started this, a lot of purslane and so on came up. Even the cactus and mesquite are healthier because nothing will root in limestone even if dying of thirst.
Cool weather is orach and collards, as well as other things like rocket. niio
Your comments are well taken. some of my family thought western Drs were GOD. I got my first taste of stay away when I was 10, overdosed. Other reactions have made me very hesitant. My own Western medical Dr started me on “alternatives”. Since then I try the herbs first. Since they are generally mild, that suits me fine. I do not subscribe to “a little is good, a lot is better”. Learned early on, herbs are potent and can be overdosed. Pay attention to what you put in your body: food, chemicals or herbaL preparations.
Don’t forget Datura. It is a plant that grows along side the roads in New Mexico, Arizona (south west) We use the leaves for pain. Pick the leaves and bruise them. Place where you have pain (you can tape them into place covered with saran wrap if you need to). Bruised ribs, broken or smashed fingers etc. I used this on my fractured T9 for pain. Had a friend use them on his knees that were sore from running. Pain was gone. The plant has white trumpet flowers and the leaves will smell like peanuts. We have had a lot of skeptics until they tried it.
Lisa: Good thing to know and I’ll remember that. Right now it’s in bloom all over here. Hope it doesn’t attract skinwalkers, LOL. niio
Re. nettles–drying the leaves will also neutralize the stinging. Dried nettles work for tea as well as in soups and stews, and they store beautifully.
I have never tried nettle tea or soup, I’ve read they taste good, and also that they taste foul. What is your experience, and how do you prepare them?
To be honest I’ve never happened to try nettle tea. I’ve frequently made “creamed nettles” (and passed it off quite successfully as creamed spinach to my husband!) as well as chopped or crumbled dried nettles into soup/stew (come to think of it, always beef types–possibly instinct said it might overpower poultry). Over-mature nettles–once they begin to make flower buds–will be both tough-textured and very strong-flavored; also, pick only the top 2-3 pairs of leaves off the tips of the plant branches, the bigger/older leaves will have the same problem. I suspect the stems are also strong-flavored (I pretty much strip the leaves off when getting ready to cook them).
That said–there’s no disputing tastes, and of course there must be those who don’t like nettles, just like I can’t stand goat cheese! 🙂
Steam till well-wilted which wipes out the sting, chop, add butter, black pepper and a touch of garlic. Tasty, and eating them helps give some immunity to the sting.
The stalk, dried, can be vetted to get the fibers out. It makes a nicer cloth than linseed. niio
I have had nettle tea. It is best to choose the newest leaves in the Spring. Steep for less than 5 minutes and then remove the leaves. As a health tonic in the Spring, many believe that it is most effective if it is the first things you drink in the morning before coffee or anything else. It you pick a week’s supply, the remainder will keep layered between wet paper towels in the frig.
Nettle soup, with a cream base, is fortifying. Because of the high nutrient level, only a smaller of bowl of soup is enough.
Datura is a beautiful plant, hawk moths and other night pollinators love the flowers. A strong tea of Datura poured into bathwater is supposed to be very relaxing and good for pain. I tried it w/o success, I think you would need a really good Curandera to get the most out of this plant. When I was a kid hippies tried to use the seeds for tripping, but like Argyreia the seeds and other parts of Datura at different points in the plants life cycle have high levels of strychnine, so the usual reward was a lot of barfing and groaning. I have seen Datura happily blooming in the middle of the desert with no other plant around it, tough and beautiful.
If you like LSD, datura is a natural. It’s witches like skinwalkers who love the stuff. Around most American Indian places, growing it about guarantees gossip, then the ax one night when a bunch of little old ladies decide to get rid of the neighborhood evil. Mine? Nope. We have two laws, do not bug the old folks and don’t scare the kids. niio
Just joined here, and some interesting comments. I’m an Aussie ?
Bienvenida, Ozzie! There’s a few around here from the Land of Oz. Don’t mind the poms, they’re looking for attention and not based in reality. Me? Nope, American Indian. Where in Oz are you from? niio, means to walk in His beauty
From country South Eastern Queensland, live on a property caring for animals of all kinds.
Creamed nettles!
Anything you would use spinach in, but tastes better. niio
Ok old wise ones. I take lots of supplements but almost no medicines EXCEPT… meds for Reflux. What ideas can you give for that? Been taking them for 30 years.
Spike:
Depends on the root cause of the problem.
I take medication for acid reflux too because I have a hiatal hernia. In layman’s terms, the flap in the esophagus that holds the contents of your stomach in… doesn’t. It leaks.
Avoiding spicy food, rich or greasy food and eating small meals can help a lot. Acidic foods like coffee, pickles and vinegar based salad dressings can aggravate it too.
Bicarbonate of soda or baking soda dissolved in water can help alleviate symptoms temporarily, but if I miss a dose I am painfully aware of it pretty quickly.
You can try talking to your doctor about it. If they won’t work with you, and you have access to one, you might want to talk to a homeopath, herbalist or Ayurveda practitioner.
I would recommend that you do some research yourself to see if there’s more you can be doing to manage your symptoms.
Good luck.
A relative of mine keep her reflux problems in check by taking blue-green algae. She only purchases a higher quality version from Oregon. She found that it took a few weeks for it to take effect. When she lapsed in taking it, it took a couple of weeks for the reflux to come back. It helps with all small sphincter muscles in your body.
Sagebrush Lin:
Thanks for the tip…I always wondered what that was good for. I’ll look into it.
Spike, I stopped worrying about things. Stopped being angry. Stopped resentment. Fear. God taught me to laugh. niio
I read in an old herbal book that the roots of nettle can be used as an expectorant for the lungs. I havent had covid yet, but i what to have some on hand to try out.