I wanted to know, whats the chance to get poisoned, if in the woods you pick a grass or root or fruit by random and eat it? Whats the chance to die?
MR
That’s very difficult to answer with a very specific answer. It depends on a lot of variables and also on what exactly you mean by “chance to die”.
Do you mean like die within a very short time after taking your first bite? Or do you mean like eating something that is hard on your kidneys, so that over a long period of time, if you decide you like eating or drinking this plant your kidney function diminishes so that you eventually die of kidney failure after years of ingesting this plant?
Which “woods”? Which roots? Which fruit?
Where I live there are several plants that can kill you pretty quickly or at the very least make you very, very sick. At least one that I can think of right off the top of my head, has berries.
[quote=“heyvictor, post:2, topic:638”]That’s very difficult to answer with a very specific answer. It depends on a lot of variables and also on what exactly you mean by “chance to die”.
Do you mean like die within a very short time after taking your first bite? Or do you mean like eating something that is hard on your kidneys, so that over a long period of time, if you decide you like eating or drinking this plant your kidney function diminishes so that you eventually die of kidney failure after years of ingesting this plant?[/quote]
Man I like it when talking about death of myself, because then my whole being screams for life and then I feel alive!
I mean how many of plants out there on the face of earth will kill you instantly or otherwise. And in what dose should it be digested to kill. Is it possible to device a discovery tactic that let’s eat a little of this and see what happens tommorow… you know, I want to know is it possible to find out what kills before being killed? MR
to the best of my knowledge, if we’re talking about minute dosages, there’s very little that will kill you instantly/very quickly (with the major exceptions being certain mushrooms). you might get violently ill, however, and dosage is a critical factor. yew berries are edible, but the seeds are fatally toxic in any but the smallest dosages (two seeds are generally considered fatally toxic to humans, and a single seed will probably cause serious illness), as an example.
detecting whether long-term, sustained usage of a plant will cause significant damage is much more difficult.
you should probably review this process: Edibility Test
I think that edibility test is well presented, and takes the many variables into account. I don’t recommend skipping over any of what they suggest there.
Mountain Refugee, without being familiar with the plants and ecosystem where you live, all I can suggest is that you do some studying of edible plant work that has already been done by others rather than feeling like you have to start from scratch on your own.
I could tell you about poisonous plants where I live but it would likely have very little to do with where you live.
i agree w/ heyvictor on learning what you can while you can before you need to start experimenting, but, i think it’s also a good idea to go thru the discovery process at least once just so you don’t find yourself racking your brain trying to figure out “what did that web site say?”.
i also want to stress that in my comments above, dosage, really, really, really is important and a toxic dosage can vary considerably from plant to plant.
Of all the poisonous plants, many/most of them wont kill you, they will just make you sick or they will taste horrible… but enough will kill you that you should not risk it. Poison or Water hemlock and certain varieties of Monks Hood can kill you very quickly, even with just a taste.
Try to study the most common plants in your area: edible, poisonous, medicinal etc. You can always find some of those nearby. Once you know the uses of a handful of very common plants you can expand your knowledge from there.
I suggest learning about plant families and genus too instead of just individual species. Then you can make much more intelligent guesses based on the shared traits of that plants genus or family even if you dont know the exact species of a plant you’ve found.
It seems that you really care! thank you all. Sure I don’t plan to go out with just how to test a plant in my mind, I just wanted to know that in the worst situation I can do something.