Dire Warnings

It is a surprise to find many decades on that I am still being given the same advice: to “Beware of the Hydrangeas.” not jocularly but apparently in all seriousness; not only hydrangeas but chrysanthemums, periwinkle and peonies.   This is a list of about seventy plants that are described as being ‘poisonous to humans’. These dire warnings are contained in a pamphlet called Plant Safety - Information for Families, an advisory that is co-published by the world famous Toronto Hospital for Sick Children and Ontario Regional Poison Information Center.

 Parents could not ask for two authors with better credentials. Why then am I so unimpressed and find fault with it in almost every detail?

Whoever compiled this list of hazardous plants (someone from the typing pool would be my guess) demonstrates that they are not familiar with plants and apparently quite oblivious to the need for scientific names. We name things so that we can talk about them and read and write about them. Using scientific names is meant to insure that we are all on the same page and are all talking about the same thing. As a horticulturist I am familiar with plants and in most cases I have a good idea of the reason that they might be thought to be injurious although in my years of experience I have never before heard of peonies being regarded as hazardous.

We are talking about peoples’ health and well-being, possibly of life or death. It is then too bad that parents are left to simply guess which plants are being referred to.  If parents are expected to heed this advice: what do they do now? Bar the children from the garden until the peonies are got rid of?  Call in a HazMat team to get them off the property. You surely cannot add them to the compost or put them on the curb for collection. They are poisonous you know.