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Medicinal and Poisonous garden plants

What to look out for in your garden.


Joan Carman- Meakin was the speaker at our meeting on Thursday 20th April, and began by telling us that a plant was a "chemical factory" producing compounds which have been recognised for generations as having beneficial properties. Nowadays the active plant chemical can be extracted and purified or synthesised. All such plant based medicines have to be approved before marketing.  

Sources of active plant chemicals can be found in roots, bulbs, bark, leaves, fruits,  seeds and flowers. Joan comprehensively described the common garden plants providing chemical compounds to treat human ailments. Of note, was the poisonous Yew leaves used to extract a chemical from which the cancer treating drug Paclitaxel is produced. Similarly, the poisonous Foxglove leaves contain the source of the drug Digioxin, used to treat heart muscle disease. The plant Vinca, known as Periwinkle is the source of drugs to treat leukaemia.
As a warning to those who have laurel shrubs in their gardens, the leaves contain cyanide. So Joan stressed the need to take care when shredding these leaves as the poisonous cyanide gas will be released.

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