Houseplant Toxicity Week: Part 2 (Crazy Super Dangerous Plants)

If you have landed on this page because you are concerned about a child or pet who has eaten a plant, seek emergency medical help.

In the U.S., you can call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222 (for children), the ASPCA at 1-888-426-4435 (for pets; $60 consultation fee applies), or the Pet Poison Helpline at 1-800-213-6680 (pets; $35 fee applies).

Part 2 of a seven-part-and-two-appendix series. (Part 1) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Appendix 1) (Appendix 2 - Index)

In part 2, we cover the plants that are crazy super dangerous to, you know, living things in general, and human beings specifically; these are the Chuck Norrises of the plant world. ("They once made a Lantana camara toilet paper, but it was a flop, because it wouldn't take shit from nobody."¹) Fortunately, and I guess also logically, most of the plants on this list are not really all that commonly grown indoors, because they're difficult, or nobody wants them because they're crazy super dangerous, or whatever.

Adenium obesum, unknown cv.
Adenium obesum (desert rose, mock azalea) Disrupts heart much like digitalis ('foxglove") and contains similar toxins; highly dangerous to humans and animals alike. Used in Africa as a freaking arrow poison and everything. (More about toxicity of Adenium at its profile.)
Alocasia spp. (elephant ear, taro) Edible if cooked in a particular way, but the raw plant is surprisingly vicious,² particularly the species A. macrorrhiza. Like Dieffenbachia spp., it appears to contain something besides irritant calcium oxalate crystals. See footnote for gory details.
Brugmansia spp. (angel's trumpets, tree datura) Though not often kept as a houseplant (not least because it's really prone to spider mites indoors), Brugmansia spp. are common enough and dangerous enough to include here. All parts of the plant contain the hardcore toxins atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine, and are dangerous. This plant is sometimes deliberately abused by the stupid and/or impressionable because hallucinations are among the symptoms.³ Unfortunately, also among the symptoms are, you know, dying. (Also: flushing, dry mouth, rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, fever, dilated pupils, freaking grand mal seizures, coma, surprise nudity,⁴ a second day of hallucinations, a third day of hallucinations, a fourth day of hallucinations, confusion, disorientation, violent agitation, etc.) There is a partial antidote (physostigmine) in cases where the plant responsible is known, but still: that's a hell of a lot of trouble to go to just to see pretty colors. Do whatever drugs you want, kids, but please don't do this one.
Or crystal meth. Don't do crystal meth, either. And actually heroin is bad too, I hear. Don't start smoking either. Actually no, I take it back: just don't do drugs. It's easier.
Colocasia spp. (elephant ear, taro) By association with Alocasia spp., q.v.
Datura spp. (devil's trumpet, jimson weed, sacred thorn apple) As for Brugmansia spp., q.v.
Euphorbia cooperi I'm listing E. cooperi in the crazy super dangerous category even though I found no evidence of it actually killing anybody. The reason for this is that it's so incredibly nasty that it's possible to get eye and nose irritation off of the vapor of a cut plant in the same room. If it's dangerous to smell the plant, then I think it qualifies as crazy super dangerous. (Link: the story in question is at the top of the page). And god help you if you happen to get some of the sap in your eye, or on your skin. There's nothing out there about ingesting E. cooperi, but I would assume that it would at least make you wish you'd never been born. It might or might not kill you.⁵

Euphorbia tirucalli
Euphorbia tirucalli (pencil cactus) There is one undocumented case at one site of a man who died from ingestion of E. tirucalli (Apparently the idea was to cure his sterility. Which to be fair, in a sense it did.). Even if it doesn't kill you, some people react strongly to the sap (bleeding sores are not unheard of), and getting sap in the eyes is agonizing, I hear. Contact with eyes will almost always result in temporary blindness, and in some cases, the eye may be permanently damaged, though permanent damage doesn't appear to be common. Wearing goggles when pruning is a rilly rilly good idea, and it's also probably a good idea to wash any exposed skin well (you may want to soap up multiple times) after you've dealt with the plant, as sometimes traces of latex can remain on you even when you've washed, and then all you have to do is wipe your eye with the back of your hand and we're back to the pain and temporary blindness again. (UPDATE: My first-hand account of getting a tiny speck of dried E. tirucalli sap in my eyes can be found here. Spoilers: I absolutely believe that getting sap squirted directly in the eye would be agonizing.) This is one of the few plants that I personally react to: I took some cuttings at work and washed up afterward, but a few hours later I noticed a red, inflamed-looking spot on the inside of my elbow. It didn't hurt or burn or do anything, but I'm pretty sure it was from the Euphorbia, and I took it as a warning to wash better in the future. Toxicity of Houseplants says the carcinogenic potential of this species is low, contrary to what I'd said in my profile on this plant.
Gloriosa superba (glory lily, climbing lily, gloriosa lily) This is another one that I see more often in the houseplant books than I have in real life. In fact, to the best of my recollection, I've never seen it in real life. All parts contain colchicine, which is a very poisonous compound also found in the autumn crocus. Colchicine stops the formation of microtubules, which if you don't know what microtubules are probably doesn't sound that bad, but it turns out that they're sort of essential for staying alive and stuff. Poisoning by Gloriosa goes on for a long time and involves what Handbook euphemistically calls "intense gastrointestinal symptoms," which the words "intense" and "gastrointestinal" together are never good.⁶
Jatropha spp. (jicamilla, physic nut, bellyache bush, coral plant, etc.) Only J. podagrica is kept as a houseplant, and then not very often, though I have seen it for sale at Wallace's, in Bettendorf IA, so I know it's out there. The seeds are definitely poisonous; it's less clear to me whether the rest of the plant is. The toxin, jatrophin, is similar to the more famous ricin, from castor beans (Ricinus communis, q.v.). Fatality is not inevitable, but it does happen. I think it's probably a safe bet that these are also toxic to pets.

Lantana camara 'Landmark Yellow.'
Lantana camara (lantana) I don't know if it's uncommon indoors because it's difficult, or because people don't like the smell, or because it's dangerously toxic, or what. I know I've thought about trying to grow some indoors, after dealing with them at work (they're sold as annuals here). It's a little unclear whether the whole plant is toxic; most human poisonings appear to involve the unripe berries, but poisoning seems to be a much bigger danger for livestock, who ingest the entire plant. Animal poisonings often involve liver and kidney damage, loss of appetite, constipation, jaundice, skin which variously peels, hardens, cracks, or turns raw and inflamed. Human fatality from the unripe berries is uncommon but does occur, and even in the cases where the person (usually a child) doesn't die, hospitalization over several days may be needed. This is probably a more serious danger to pets than to children.
Nerium oleander (oleander) This is not a common indoor plant, though it could probably be done in a sunroom or similar arrangement, and I have sold one as an indoor plant at work (after making fairly certain that the customer knew toxicity was potentially an issue). Like Adenium obesum, to which it is related, the whole plant contains toxins which affect the heart, and in high enough concentration that people have been known to exhibit poisoning from eating marshmallows roasted on Nerium sticks, or drinking the water in which Nerium flowers had been placed. Human toxicity is not inevitable but is common enough to be scary; I didn't find any reports of pet toxicity but I expect (due to smaller body size) pets are more at risk.
Plumeria spp. (frangipani) Neither Toxicity of Houseplants nor Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants mention Plumeria, but 1) it's in the same family as Adenium and Nerium, so at the very least, caution is warranted, and 2) this site says that Plumeria, though it's not widely known, can cause most of the same problems as the more toxic Euphorbia species, including blindness from getting sap in one's eyes, severe skin irritation if sap drips on skin, and severe pain and possible death from ingestion of plant parts.

Rhododendron NOID.
Rhododendron spp. (azalea) Not all Rhododendron species contain grayanotoxins (the group of related compounds responsible for Rhododendron toxicity), but the nonscientist is advised to treat them all as though they did, because what with hybridization and so forth, it's more or less impossible to know unless you test each of your plants individually. Grayanotoxins block cell sodium channels, which lead variously to: heart arrythmias, low blood pressure, vomiting, slowed heartbeat, coma, diarrhea, irritability, excessive salivation, burning sensations in the mouth, tingling in the skin, dimming vision, muscle weakness, headache, convulsions, and death. Individual cases show wide variation, probably because individual plants may contain very different amounts of grayanotoxins and individuals consume very different amounts of plant. Rhododendron spp. are also definitely known to be lethal to cats; the reader should probably assume that this applies to most other pet species. The toxin is also found in the nectar of flowers, so honey made from Rhododendrons can be toxic as well. And yes, people have died from the honey.⁷
Ricinus communis (castor bean) This is more typically a garden plant than a houseplant, and probably, actually, if you see someone growing it as a houseplant, you might want to stay away from them in the future, 'cause this suggests that they want to grow it but they don't want anybody to know they're growing it. In the garden, Ricinus communis is kind of difficult to hide: it gets huge (in the tropics, to 15 feet tall: a co-worker tells me one she planted in her garden many years ago reached 8 feet in a single growing season). The seeds contain a highly toxic protein, ricin, which is easily absorbed only if the hard seed coats are broken: intact seeds generally do not cause any problems if swallowed whole and intact. Purified ricin is occasionally used as a murder weapon, most famously on the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov in 1978 (an umbrella was modified to actually shoot a pellet of ricin into his leg: it's an interesting story). It does, however, seem to be an awful lot of trouble, and the amount of time spent growing the plant and purifying the toxin and all that inevitably leaves a trail of some kind. I mean, if you're reading this post to get ideas about how to murder people, there are simpler ways. Also people are increasingly hip to the toxic potential of ricin, and the authorities do semi-regularly catch people plotting to kill others with it. (Also to be considered: it's just as toxic to you as it is to your intended victim. I mean seriously.) This is not the murder weapon you are looking for.

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Photo credits: My own. The Lantana picture is new, even.

¹ That joke didn't really translate very well, did it? I'm finding it difficult to get the mental image of Lantana toilet paper out of my mind. Gosh, but that would be unpleasant. [pause] Maybe the better joke would be, ". . . but it flopped, because nobody wants to give Lantana any shit." Better? Worse? Just kinda nonsensical?
² For those in the reading audience who were surprised to see this on the most-dangerous category: I know. I was too. But at least A. macrorrhiza belongs there. Toxicity of Houseplants has the following to say on the subject: "Biting or chewing any plant part causes severe pain in the mouth, throat, lips, and stomach. Touching the lips after handling the flowers can cause unbearable pain. Fatalities in children have been reported after ingestion of portions of the root or leaf. Delirium and death occurred within 6h. . . . Intense eye pain has been described after splash contact with plant juices." If it can kill children, I think it belongs in the crazy super dangerous category. As unpleasant as Dieffenbachia is, I was unable to find any account of it actually killing anybody (though I suspect from some of the descriptions that it made people want to die), so Alocasia winds up on the more dangerous list. Not all Alocasia spp. are necessarily this bad, but since they're hard to tell apart unless you're an expert, and since there's a pretty severe penalty for biting one even when it doesn't kill you, they may as well all wind up here.
³ Pah, I say. Just get sloppy drunk and watch Coraline, and save yourself a lot of trouble.
⁴ Less fun than it sounds. Case report reprinted in Toxicity of Houseplants reads, in part, "A 15-year-old boy found wandering naked and delirious developed profound muscle weakness and a seizure shortly after admission. Systolic hypertension, tachycardia, fever, dry mouth, flushed dry skin, and dilated pupils were noted. . . . Visual hallucinations continued for 4 d."
⁵ It should not surprise regular PATSP readers to learn that since finding this out about the species, I've wanted an E. cooperi desperately, though when I had the chance to buy one a while back, I didn't. I don't know why this is. Either thing -- the wanting to buy or the failing to buy. I don't understand either one of them. I'm very complicated. I contain multitudes.
⁶ The more detailed list, from Handbook and Toxicity of Houseplants, includes pain in the mouth, pain in the stomach, severe, profuse, persistent diarrhea (which often leads to equally severe and persistent dehydration), bone marrow suppression, collapse of the circulatory system, shock, hair loss, dramatic drop in blood pressure, inability to urinate, continuous vomiting, increased heart rate, etc., eventually climaxing in, usually, respiratory failure and death.
⁷ Or, well, maybe they've died from the honey. Apparently whatever site I got this from (it wasn't Toxicity or Handbook) neglected to add that this derives from a couple very, very old stories of questionable accuracy, and that nothing like this has been confirmed (or even, apparently, claimed) in a couple thousand years. There have, however, been claims of nonfatal poisoning of honey by Rhododendron nectar as recently as the mid 1980s; however, these cases were in Turkey and Austria, and I have no idea how I would go about confirming any of them. Toxicity does include a reference to heart arrythmias being induced by honey containing grayanotoxins, from 1988, which I would expect to be well-documented and confirmed and everything. So . . . maybe lethal honey has happened to a handful of people, over the last several thousand years, out of the 106,000,000,000 people who have ever lived. I wouldn't lose sleep over it. PATSP regrets the error.

Houseplant Toxicity Week: Part 1 (Introduction and Disclaimers)

If you have landed on this page because you are concerned about a child or pet who has eaten a plant, seek emergency medical help.

In the U.S., you can call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222 (for children), the ASPCA at 1-888-426-4435 (for pets; $60 consultation fee applies), or the Pet Poison Helpline at 1-800-213-6680 (pets; $35 fee applies).

Part 1 of a seven-part-and-two-appendix series. (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Appendix 1) (Appendix 2 - Index)

And it begins.

As I explained a couple weeks ago, this was originally planned to be a single, albeit very long, post, and then when I realized that it was on-track to be roughly the size of a smallish novel, I had to scrap that plan and come up with a different way of presenting the information. So I have divided the houseplant-toxicity list into seven posts (plus two appendices), which will go up over the course of this week. I'm not entirely happy about dividing it up, but nobody's going to read a 19000 24000 word post all in one sitting.

Lantana camara 'Rose Glow Improved.' Like all Lantana, it is toxic.

So this post is for the introduction and disclaimers. Let's do the disclaimers first:

1) I cannot guarantee that the information which follows is accurate, though I have done the best I could, and I'm fairly certain about most of it. When possible, I have referred to books which are specifically about plant toxicity and have beaucoup scientific references to back up what's being said. For other plants, I've used on-line lists (when a consensus existed) or used guilt-by-association (assuming that plants in the same family, and especially in the same genus, share similar levels of toxicity).
2) Differing species will react differently to the same plant. What is toxic to parrots will not necessarily be toxic to turtles, or cats, or babies. For the most part, my references are interested in humans, not pets, so my list is also primarily focused on humans. Some humane societies, pet enthusiast websites, etc., have their own lists, all of which I find problematic in some way or another (or else I wouldn't have felt compelled to come up with my own), but if you're interested in safety for a specific organism, you should probably also consult a list particular to that organism, however questionable some of the information in it might be.¹ When a normally-safe plant is known to be exceptionally harmful to a particular species of interest, I have tried to note this in the text.
3) Even a normally safe species has the potential to be harmful if it has recently been treated with a pesticide, particularly systemic pesticides (which are by design taken up into the tissues of the plant). I did not find evidence that this kind of poisoning has ever actually happened, at least not in humans: the amounts involved would not normally be enough to matter.² But it's not impossible.

Agave victoriae-reginae, I think. Since writing that profile, I've become less certain about the ID. Agave spp. are, of course, potentially dangerous due to their spines, even if they weren't also somewhat toxic and indigestible.

4) Plants that are not actually poisonous may still be dangerous if ingested due to spines, thorns, etc. and should still not be eaten. (It does sometimes happen that a thorn or sharp projection can slice or perforate esophagus or intestines or whatever on the way through the system of an animal or child. It's rare, and in any case you should already know that there are thorns or whatever and consider the plant dangerous enough to keep out of reach -- you knew about people poking their eyes out, if not about the intestine thing -- but even so I figure I should say it explicitly.) I have taken this into account when deciding which list to place certain thorny plants in.
5) Plants which are not actually poisonous may, on rare occasion, cause potentially life-threatening allergic reactions in susceptible individuals. Allergic reactions are hard to predict, vary in intensity, may develop over time, can happen in response to pretty much any plant, and happen more often with plants that are dangerous for other reasons anyway, so I haven't made a point of taking this into account.

Ficus benjamina 'Midnight.' Ficus spp. cause allergic reactions in a lot of people, though these are rarely if ever life-threatening. I personally mostly just get itchy.

6) In the interests of not making the post any longer than it absolutely had to be, I've declined to provide photos of all of the plants. I've included a few pictures throughout the posts, for decorative / illustrative purposes, and if the plant was the subject of a PATSP profile, I linked to the profile, where there will be other pictures. Googling a plant name will normally turn up a picture anyway, so do that if there's a question.
7) I have chosen very deliberately to include a lot of information here, because I feel like I'm having to serve a lot of masters at once (dog owners, parents, herp enthusiasts, recreational drug users, recreational drug users with snakes and children but not dogs, etc.) and I figure it's better to include stuff that may not be relevant to you than it would be to leave something out that is. So this is not going to be a quick and clear reference to everything you want to know. There will be extraneous information. I would have given you only the information you wanted to know if I knew in advance what information that was.
8) I make frequent reference to two books:
Nelson, Lewis S., Richard D. Shih, and Michael J. Balick. Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants, 2nd ed., Springer Science + Business Media, New York, NY, 2007.
Spoerke, David G., Jr., and Susan Smolinske. Toxicity of Houseplants, CRC Press, Inc., Boca Raton, FL, 1990.
These are often abbreviated to Handbook and Toxicity, respectively, in the text. Just in case you wanted to know where this is all coming from.

Epipremnum aureum. One of a gazillion plants that contain microscopic needles of calcium oxalate, so that if you try to bite them, they stab you back, causing pain and swelling and so forth. Dangerous-ish, insofar as it hurts a lot but usually nobody dies.

9) Please do try to keep this all in perspective. Most of the time, ingestion of a houseplant is not going to result in serious problems. Dangerous plants absolutely do exist, but it's actually very rare that anyone dies, or even has any serious long-term effects. According to one site, in the U.S. in the year 2000, there were six deaths due to "other and unspecified venomous animal or plant" (i.e., either the animal wasn't identified, it was an animal other than snake, lizard, spider, hornet, wasp, or bee, or it was a plant), which even if all six were plants, I'd be surprised if all six were houseplants. By contrast, hornets/wasps/bees killed 82 people in that year, and suicide killed 32,637. So not only are you probably safer indoor gardening than outdoor gardening, you're (statistically) at least a few hundred times safer alone in a room with your houseplant than you are alone in a room with yourself.^{3 4 5}

So anyway. I'm very much in favor of people knowing which plants they have and how dangerous they are. I approve of people taking some basic precautions to keep plants out of the reach of kids and pets. I think there are situations where you should wear goggles (and maybe long sleeves) if you're pruning or taking cuttings to propagate. I think keeping kids and pets away from plants, and making sure they're not top-heavy (the plants, not the kids and pets⁶) and won't tip over on the kids, is a good thing. I also think there are situations where it's handy to know what's what, just so you can make an educated choice and buy safer plant B instead of the more dangerous plant A. However. I do not approve of some of the sites I came across in the course of the research here, which seemed to be less about useful information than trying to scare people: I don't think ZOMG YR PLANTZ WILL KILL U W/ POIZEN!!!1!!!!1!!!! is a realistic or useful message, even though some of them sure enough can.

If readers have direct personal experience about any plant, whether on or off of this list (or if anyone outside the U.S. wants to let me know about their country's version of Poison Control and how to contact them, for the advice at the top of the post), please leave it in the comments. I probably will not have the time to respond individually to each and every comment, but that doesn't mean that your feedback might not prove to be useful to someone else, and eventually I will get around to checking out whatever it is, so please, don't hold back.

Tradescantia zebrina. Mild skin irritant for a few people. Generally considered safe.

So here's how the rest of this is going to work. I've divided plants into six categories, according to level of danger. The first five are:
Crazy super dangerous, Dangerous, Potentially dangerous, Unpleasant, and Safe. The sixth category, Unknown/could not determine, is for plants where I either found no information or conflicting information. If anybody knows for certain one way or the other on those, or if anyone disagrees strongly with the placement of a plant on the following lists, please speak up in the comments and I will adjust the post accordingly (if I think you've made your case suitably well: I'm not going to change the post every ten seconds just on some random person's say-so, however wonderful that random person might be. Scientific references, if available, carry a lot more weight with me than anything else. Just so you know.).

Tomorrow it begins. We'll start with the ninjas ("crazy super dangerous").

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Photo credits: all are my own.

¹ Because it was requested, I have tried to flag specific plants I'm reasonably certain are safe for terrariums including reptiles or amphibians. Pretty much anything that doesn't have sharp points (Agave, e.g.), corrosive sap (Euphorbia), or highly toxic sap (Adenium) should be okay for carnivores: for example, most of the species in the Araceae, though they are toxic if eaten, are safe for animals that aren't going to try to eat them and aren't big enough to crush them.
² If, for example, you put pesticide granules totaling 500 mg of pesticide in the soil of a plant, 500 mg is the absolute maximum possible dose, and that's only if the whole thing -- pot, drainage water, plant and all -- is eaten. In reality, this is very unlikely, and most of the pesticide will be in the soil at any given time. That still might be enough to be dangerous, of course, but if you've followed the label directions (Which you should always do), it's very unlikely that harmful amounts will be ingested from the plant itself. Ingestion of the straight pesticide, right out of the bottle, is a lot more likely. It's silly to sit around wringing your hands about your maybe-toxic houseplants if you leave your bug sprays, cleaning products, antifreeze, rat poisons, etc. unsecured.
³ Toxicity of Houseplants says that in 1987, there were 88,251 reported cases of plant exposure for which medical attention was sought, only thirty-one of which were "serious," and only one of which resulted in a fatality. And the one fatality was from a garden plant, not a houseplant. So this appears to be somewhat consistent from year to year. And by the way: hooray for Interlibrary Loan! And a big thank-you to the University of Wyoming (Laramie) Library!
⁴ Obviously pets are a different story, and pet-related statistics are much less complete, and pets are probably more likely to have serious consequences from eating a houseplant.
⁵ The math is kind of tongue-in-cheek here: obviously the risk from ingesting a plant is mostly a function of how likely you are to ingest it, and it may be that there aren't many houseplant poisonings because there aren't more houseplants, or aren't more babies, or because most people can't keep houseplants alive long enough for them to pose a risk, or whatever. But even so, it's uncommon, and for the majority of the plants I looked up, even in the cases where someone actually did eat a plant that was actually poisonous, they didn't eat enough of the plant to have any symptoms, or the symptoms were there but relatively limited.
Another, if ickier to contemplate, way to look at all this would be to say that in a hypothetical U.S. where everybody's future cause of death was printed on their forehead, for every one person you saw whose forehead said "other and unspecified poisonous animal or plant," you'd meet or see 5400 people whose foreheads read "suicide," and 118,000 "heart attacks." In fact, about half of all the people you met, saw on television, or saw pictures of in ads and photos would say "heart attack," "cancer," or "stroke," just those three. So in the long run, you should be about 118,000 times more worried about heart disease killing your kid than about your houseplants killing your kid.
⁶ Though there's probably a post to be written about the dangers of top-heavy pets, too. Children not so much, because I think it's general knowledge that they tend to tip over.

Pretty picture: Scabiosa columbaria 'Butterfly Blue'

Another perennial flower I don't know much about. The color doesn't do much for me, but it's fairly complicated, which makes it sort of interesting. Not a big fan of the botanical name: anything that begins with "scabby" (even if you pronounce it with a long A) isn't going to sound all that beautiful. Scabirenia, Scabiella, Scabionia, Scabianthus, Scabidendron -- the only one of those that even comes close to sounding pretty is Scabiella, and even that sounds more like some kind of latex-clad comic book super-villainess ("Madame Scabiella! The test monkeys have escaped into the city!" "Quickly, Clot Girl! To the Scabmobile!") than a pretty flower.

Not that the names should have to all sound pretty, I guess. But it seems like we could save the ugly-sounding names for the stuff we don't like, and I'm assuming that there are people out there who like Scabiosa. This is one situation where I won't mind people using the common name ("pincushion flower") instead.

Work-related: dirt pyramid

We had a batch of coleus plugs (Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Pink Chaos') show up a while back this spring that just kind of sucked. We went ahead and planted them up, but then a lot of them rotted and died anyway, so we had to un-pot them. It turns out that potting mix of a certain level of dampness holds its shape pretty well, so I built a dirt pyramid (like a sand castle, but simpler) as I dumped the bad plants. It lasted for a few days.

Pretty picture: Lychnis x haageana 'Molten Lava'

I know basically nothing about Lychnis except that it's a perennial here, and I only know that because it's in the greenhouse where we keep the perennials.

I do like it, though. The color is very intense (more red and less orange in person), and there's something pleasing to me about how exact the geometry is. It's rare to see a pentagon that's that perfect. Opening the picture in a new window will make the details show up a lot better.

Random plant event: six-petaled Streptocarpus 'Purple Martin'

Normally, Streptocarpus have flowers with five petals (as well as other gesneriads, like Saintpaulia), which are partly fused into a tube (not true of most Saintpaulias, though semi-tubular Saintpaulias do exist). This particular specimen lost count at some point and wound up with six. It wasn't the only flower on this plant that did this, but there weren't very many sixes before it reverted to fives. (I know it was the same plant because, naturally, I wound up buying it and bringing it home.)

I don't know that this really means anything much, but I'm curious about what would have made this happen, and especially what could have made it happen that would be easily reversible, as this obviously was. [shrug]

Pretty picture: Dianthus cv. 'Black Cherry Wild'

I didn't even notice the flower when I passed by this plant the first half-dozen times I passed it, the day this picture was taken. Once I did notice it, though, I became kind of intrigued. It's an unusual color for a flower (the color in the picture is fairly accurate), and since the only Dianthus I was familiar with before this were the bright white, searing red, and glow-in-the-dark pink of the annual type we sell, this was even more of a revelation.

I don't know if I'd want one in my yard. (I'm not sure I want a yard, either, as far as that goes.) But it's oddly compelling all the same.

Question for the Hive Mind: NOID woodland flower

A co-worker brought this in for ID on Thursday; it had been planted in her (late) mother's yard, and until this year she hadn't even been aware that it flowered. Nursery Lot Guy and Perennial Expert didn't know what it was, so I said I'd take some pictures and ask the internet.

I have a guess myself, after a bit of poking around on-line, but I don't want to bias you, so I'll save it until after the pictures.




My guess is a Hepatica of some kind, perhaps but probably not H. insularis. Plausible?