Its floral beauty when in bloom makes us forget that the autumn crocus has a darker side. All parts of the autumn-flowering onion plant are toxic. Read here about the toxin content of Colchicum autumnale.

Autumn crocuses are deadly poisonous

Toxic as arsenic - The insidious danger of autumn crocus

The autumn-blooming onion plants are permeated with alkaloids. This includes colchicine, which shows similarities with arsenic. The lethal dose is 10 to 20 mg, which is about 2 g of onion pulp or 5 g of seeds. Autumn crocuses pose a lethal danger, especially for children, pets and grazing animals. Fatally, the first symptoms of poisoning only appear after a few hours, which makes treatment more difficult, since gastric lavage no longer helps.

Typical symptoms of autumn crocus poisoning

When the first symptoms of colchicine poisoning appear, the poison has already been in the body for several hours. The first signs should therefore be known in order to act immediately, because now every minute counts. You should pay attention to this:

  • Gradually worsening difficulty swallowing
  • A burning, scratchy sensation in the mouth and throat
  • nausea, vomiting, diarrhea
  • Falling blood pressure with a simultaneous drop in body temperature

If the person concerned does not receive immediate medical treatment, death occurs due to circulatory arrest and respiratory paralysis. The patient experiences this torment in full consciousness until the end. The most common cause is confusing the leaves with wild garlic. Children also put the flowers in their mouths. Sometimes the relatively large flower bulb is swapped for a kitchen onion.

tips

If you do not want to tolerate such a poisonous plant in the garden, removing it requires a good deal of perseverance. In the rarest of cases, herbicides reach the bulbs deep in the ground, from which autumn crocuses repeatedly sprout. It is better if you consistently weed the green leaves every May to starve the plant out in the long run.

Category:

Vegetable garden