Dog's Mercury

Today's the day ........................ for a warning

I saw lots of this Mercurialis perennis or Dog's Mercury when I was out for a walk today.

It's a very common plant, often seen carpeting the floor of ancient woodlands.  It can quickly colonise and spread by its underground stems so that it  can sometimes shade woodland floors and crowd out other species.  It produces small flowers from February to April but leaves can persist throughout the year.

It has spear-shaped, toothed, fresh green leaves carried on upright stems.  It produces a foul and rotten smell, and bears clusters of small, greenish flowers in the spring.  If you have a look here, you can see what it looks like when it's growing.

The point is that every part of this innocuous-looking plant is poisonous.  Ingestion can lead to vomiting, jaundice, coma and eventually death.  So it's for that reason that I'm telling you now just in case you gather it up by mistake when you're foraging in the wild ........................