Poisonous plants thrive in S. Florida

FORT LAUDERDALE A decorative plant found on highway medians in South Florida contains chemicals that can stop your heart. A bush with flamboyantly drooping flowers serves as a cheap hallucinogen for teenagers, who then wind up on ventilators. The sap of a tree that grows along beaches causes painful blisters that discharge liquid that forms more blisters.

The dazzling foliage of South Florida, both natural and landscaped, contains dozens of species that can hurt you. With its warm year-round climate the last couple of weeks being the exception South Florida provides a welcoming home to a vast variety of native and non-native plants containing substances that can irritate skin, damage eyes, slow the pulse, initiate seizures and cause organ failure.

"I'm certain we're No. 1 in the nation," said Roger Hammer, a well-known naturalist who has written books on the plants of Florida. "We get all the rainfall, we get all the sunshine, and we can grow truly tropical plants in South Florida. And there are definitely more tropical plants that are poisonous."

Last year, 616 cases of plant poisonings were reported in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Lee, Collier and Monroe counties, according to the Florida Poison Information Network. Of 153 categories of poison sources, plants ranked 14th statewide, with 2,659 cases, behind sedatives, cosmetics and anti-depressants, but ahead of vitamins, food and antibiotics.

In the 10 years through 2008, the last year for which national statistics are available, poisonous plants accounted for 27 deaths in the United States, and poisonous mushrooms accounted for 32 deaths.

So who would consume leaves, stems and seeds from strange plants around the garden and living room? Children under 6, teenagers trying to get high and a few unlucky or not particularly quick-witted adults.

David Bohorquez, who has worked in emergency rooms in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, recalls one man who came for treatment after eating a mushroom from his lawn.

"He saw it on the ground and thought it looked good and ate it," said Bohorquez, now medical director of the emergency department at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach. "He had horribly bad gastritis. Vomiting. Burst capillaries on his face from throwing up. Good thing he didn't die."

A dangerous high

An extremely hazardous plant called angel's trumpet, which thrives in South Florida, has become known as an inexpensive way to obtain the effects of LSD.

In one case, a teenage boy was brought into the emergency room suffering from seizures, fever and violent hallucinations.

"We had to tie him down," Bohorquez said. "Initially, I thought he was a psych patient. We got blood and tox screens back and everything was okay. Then someone came in and told us he had messed around with angel's trumpet."

The teen had drunk two glasses of tea made from the plant's leaves. He ended up on a ventilator, as doctors administered drugs to control his seizures and other symptoms, helping him finally to recover. "We basically gave him supportive care through three days of hell," Bohorquez said, who has seen two other cases of angel's trumpet poisonings since that case five years ago.

Native to South America, angel's trumpets are found widely in the U.S. but die when the weather turns cold. In South Florida, however, angel's trumpets live for years, allowing their toxins to become more concentrated, said Jeffrey Bernstein, medical director of the Florida Poison Information Center-Miami, which covers southeast Florida. Last year, there were 21 cases of angel's trumpet poisonings reported in South Florida.

"It is not a good high," he said. "There's usually one death a year nationally, and that's usually in Florida."

Another dangerous but common plant is the oleander, a native of the Mediterranean basin that contains chemicals that can cause vomiting, dizziness, low blood pressure, seizures and death. Despite its dangers, oleander has become popular in Florida and other Sunbelt states as a cheap and durable plant for landscaping roads and public buildings.

"I can't believe that oleander is so widespread around elementary schools and playgrounds," said Hammer, the naturalist who has written books on Florida flora. "You're just asking for it. I'm surprised there aren't more children getting poisoned by those plants."

At Everglades National Park, where the best-known hazards are alligators and venomous snakes, park volunteer Tom Rahill had an unfortunate encounter with a poisonous tree called the manchineel. Known for a sap so toxic that the Calusa Indians dipped their arrows in it, the tree persists in a few remote areas, including a section of the southern Everglades where Rahill was leading a group of volunteers clearing an old canoe trail.

Aware of the tree's dangers, he was careful as he hauled a manchineel branch out of the canal. But he mistakenly allowed a bit of mud on the branch to brush his side. It didn't kill him, but on the drive back to his house in Plantation, he felt a painful burning sensation.

"It was like a big freaking cigar somebody was putting out on me," he said. "I had a baseball-sized blister."

A more common tree to watch out for is the poisonwood, an important food for the rare white-crowned pigeon but a source of severe skin irritation for people. Poisonwood, found in pinelands, hammocks and beaches, has a toxic sap that can be found on all parts of the plant. Contact can cause painful itching and blisters that ooze fluid that spreads the disease.

Children most vulnerable

Of the 63,362 plant poisonings reported in the United States in 2008, 68 percent involved children under the age of 6, according to the American Association of Poison Control Centers.

Toddlers seem particularly attracted to waxy flowers, said John Pipoly, urban horticulture agent for the University of Florida-Broward County Extension, who helps doctors identify plants involved in poisoning cases.

"On several occasions, I've been e-mailed pictures of flowers that kids have swallowed," he said. "They had a toddler in the ER who had eaten like 10 allamanda flowers. I told them what it was, and they knew what to do, and they administered an antidote and the kid was fine."

Among the most common ways for children to become poisoned by plants is by chewing on the leaves or flowers of houseplants. Particularly widespread are poisonings from houseplants called oxalates, which contain crystals that explode into the child's mouth like shards of glass, causing intense pain, swelling and difficulty speaking.

These plants include arrowhead, caladium, dieffenbachia (known as dumb cane because of its effect on speech), elephant ear, peace lily, philodendron and pothos. Last year, there were 403 oxalate poisonings reported statewide. Although these events are painful and can be scary, they are rarely serious, poison control officials said.

Other common plants, with more serious potential consequences, are castor beans and rosary peas, outdoor ornamental plants that accounted for at least 24 poisonings last year in South Florida. Rosary peas are also used to make necklaces, and children sometime put them in their mouths, with several fatalities in the past few years.

"If swallowed whole, fine. If chewed, they can cause several gastrointestinal disease or death," said Dr. Bernstein of the Miami poison control center. "They're brightly colored and they're pretty, and because they're brightly colored, a kid will put them in their mouth."

Jesse Durko, owner of a nursery in Davie, understands the occasional dangers of the things growing in gardens, having seen a tree trimmer go to the hospital with severe eye pain from contact with the sap of a pencil cactus tree.

"It's just too nasty to work around, especially for someone with children," he said.

But he said it's important to keep perspective in a world in which lots of things can be dangerous if handled the wrong way.

"The garden can be like life," he said. "It has things that are wonderful and beautiful, and it has things that are dangerous, too. The garden also heals. It has much more healing things than things that are dangerous. Just don't ingest your garden, unless it's a tomato."