The world's 10 most deadly plants, oleander is on the list!

Human life is inseparable from plants. Most of human food comes directly or indirectly from green plants, and they are the only oxygen producers on the earth. Plants have been silently improving and beautifying the human living environment. In the plant kingdom, there are about 7,000 edible plant species. Many of them have miraculous healing effects, but some are deadly to us. Many humans die each year from accidentally eating these poisonous plants. The plant kingdom also has many carnivorous plants that, although posing little threat to humans, are deadly to other creatures. These plants mainly include the following ten species.

1. Mandala

The whole plant is poisonous, with the fruit and especially the seeds being the most toxic, followed by the young leaves. The dried leaves are less toxic than the fresh leaves. It is widely distributed in all continents of the world and in all provinces and regions of China. The medicinal ingredients contained in Datura can relax muscles and inhibit the secretion of sweat glands. Therefore, the ancients named the anesthetic made from this flower "meng sweat medicine". Alkaloids such as hyoscyamine contained in Datura flowers, roots, and fruits have a strong sedative effect, but if used in too large a dose, it can cause poisoning reactions such as mental confusion, blurred consciousness, hallucinations, coma, and paralysis. Legend has it that the anesthetic prescription Ma Fei San created by Zhonghua Tuo contains the ingredient of Datura.

2. Venus Flytrap

The Venus flytrap is a perennial herb native to North America that preys on insects. The leaf margins of the Venus flytrap contain nectar glands that secrete nectar to attract insects. When an insect enters the leaf surface, the leaves will quickly close to clamp the insect, and the stinging hairs will tightly interlock and bite each other to prevent the insect from escaping.

3. White snakeroot

White snakeroot is a poisonous perennial plant found in grasslands and pastures across North America, and every part of the plant contains perilla toxins. This is an unsaturated alcohol that can cause muscle tremors and ultimately death in livestock. When herbivores, such as cattle, eat it, it can cause a disease called "tremor sickness." Drinking milk from cows that have eaten white snakeroot can cause the fatal "milk sickness" that killed Nancy Hanks, the mother of former US President Lincoln.

4. Poisonberry

Poisonberry is a poisonous plant native to the northern temperate zone, mostly found in shady forests. The plant is a cardiotoxin that affects the myocardium. Its berries are particularly toxic, and accidental ingestion or overdose of the plant can cause cardiac arrest and death, but the toxin is harmless to birds.

5. Bladderwort

Bladderwort is distributed in all temperate regions of the world. Utricularia is an active carnivorous plant that can complete a feeding in as little as one hundredth of a second. Its food mainly consists of small invertebrates such as water fleas, nematodes and mosquito larvae in the water. It can occasionally prey on vertebrates such as small fish fry and tadpoles. It is said that when bladderwort sucks in its prey, the acceleration of the prey from rest to movement can reach 600g (600 times the acceleration of gravity on Earth), while humans will pass out when subjected to an acceleration of 15G. It can be seen that for its "prey", bladderwort is definitely a deadly killer!

6. Pitcher Plant

Nepenthes is a tropical carnivorous plant that has a unique organ for absorbing nutrients - the insect pitcher. The insect pitcher is cylindrical in shape, slightly bulging in the lower half, and has a lid on the mouth. It is named because of its shape which resembles a pig cage. The bottle cap of the bottle-shaped body can release fragrance to attract insects. The mouth of the bottle is smooth, so insects will slide into the bottle and be drowned by the liquid secreted from the bottom of the bottle, which will decompose the nutrients in the insect body and gradually digest and absorb them.

7. Oleander

It is native to Iran, India and other countries and regions. Oleander is one of the most poisonous plants, containing a variety of toxins, some of which are even deadly and extremely toxic. The most abundant toxins are the cardiac glycosides oleandrin and neriine. These toxins can be found in all parts of the oleander plant, with the highest concentrations in the sap, which can cause paralysis on the skin.

8. Poison Hemlock

Distributed in the northern temperate zone, Chinese poison hemlock is mainly found along waterside or ditches in swamps in the Northeast, Northwest, and North China regions. Its leaves are similar to celery leaves. The whole plant is poisonous, and the flowers are the most toxic. Eating them will cause nausea, vomiting, cold hands and feet, and paralysis of the limbs. In severe cases, it can cause death. The main toxic ingredients are coniine, methylconiine and conitoxin.

9. Sea lemon tree

The sea lemon tree is a plant that grows in southwestern India. Its fruit is highly poisonous and is often used as a suicide tool. Therefore, this tree is also called the "suicide tree." During the flowering period, the flowers have white petals and emit a jasmine scent. The sea mango fruit is green and looks like a small mango. Therefore, many children mistakenly think that the sea mango is a mango when they see it for the first time and eat it, eventually dying.

10. Castor

It is native to Egypt, Ethiopia and India, and later spread to Brazil, Thailand, Argentina, the United States and other countries. The ricin in castor beans can cause poisoning, and there is often a long incubation period before the symptoms of poisoning appear. It mainly causes damage to the liver and kidneys, disrupts carbohydrate metabolism, and the lectin in castor can also agglutinate blood cells. In rural Huzhou, people fry castor beans and eat them without causing poisoning, probably because heating destroys the ricin protein. In 2007, the Guinness Book of World Records labeled it the most poisonous plant in the world.