Could this be true??

It may be a hoax, but got me thinking. A friend told me that they had heard of three boys in Florida who had been sniffing Brugs - and died when they got the pollen in their noses!!!! Seems a little far fetched since we all do so much "sniffing" even tho we know that all parts are poisen. Maybe they were doing more than "sniffing".
What do you think??

Sounds like scare tactics to me. Maybe if they were snorting the pollen!!

The lethal dose is a number of leaves. I think a bit of pollen wouldn't have any effect. It is true though that the flowers are also toxic.

PJ,
That's nice to tell me since I'm the pollen banker for BGI. LOL
Went to Boomtown last night and tore them up!!!!

Naw.............not a bit of truth, otherwise half of everybody here, wouldn't be here. Think about it!!

"eyes"

I think it's a hoax. Last summer my 5yr old GS would go out in my garden and smell just about every Brug.There were times he had pollen on his nose and I had to tell him not to stick his whole head in the bloom. LOL. He never had any ill effects.He was taught from day one that they were poisonous and never to put any part of it in his mouth.

Inhaling large quantities of Brug pollen can cause allergic reactions in sensetive individuals...will sometimes cause headaches too..but death..I don't think so!!!!!LOL If you bring a blooming brug indoors in a confined area with litte ventilation you will have a great sinus headache in the morning..but will clear up after exposure to fresh air.They are called Borrochero trees in Peru..because sleeping under one or too close to one in bloom will cause behavior similar to being drunk or confused.After all these plants are HIGHLY hallucenigenic..

Oh oh! The GH is now opened into my bedroom and when the furnace is on you can sure smell them when sleeping when they are in bloom. That explains me stumbling around in a stupor in the morning. And all this time I thought it was lack of caffeine. ;)

Funny! I stumbled around in the morning, before my coffee, also. Did not even own brugs then. Now I have them blooming in the bedroom and think I am sharper when getting up than I ever have been.

Think those kids might have tried smoking the rolled up leaves??

Yep - I really thought so too, smoking or chewing leaves I mean. The man that told me this was so serious about it, of course my dh beleived him!! So now he warned me to be more careful around them, I thought surely some of you gals from Fl would have heard this if it were true. I should have gone to "Hoax Busters" first before I posted this. Thanks guys.

Good for you Gloria, we plan to give it a try again on the 9th/10th!!

I decided to burn Jimson weed today(the freaky stuff is wild here)It manly smoked because it's really wet--well I was fine until the wind shifted and blew the stuff in my face--for a moment I thought I would yak. Now I have a headache. I hope I don't have a drug test soon.

Gloria . . so that mean that I get a bigger Christmas present now?? LOL Sounds like you had one heck of a night.

Azalea, there have been kids die in florida supposedly from brugs, they are illegal to grow in a couple of places because of that. it wasn't from sniffing though. melbourne i am sure is one, a friend of mine lived there and told me. another place in sourth florida also. they will have to bring the big guns if they decide they don't want me to grow them here.

then again, maybe i don't keep having the flu, maybe i am hallucinating.....

Gosh Arlene, thought you'd be feeling better by now. Sorry you're still sick.

hope you get to feeling better!!!

i'm on my second round, same symptoms....empty headed... maybe it is the brugs, lol

Arlene . . hope it clears up soon. I know you have been doing alot of work and hopefully, you can now rest a little.

Get well soon Arlene. We can't be sick during the holidays and don't want to be the rest of the year. Maybe you aren't letting yourself get totally over the bug before you start working again and it is just coming back due to your system being run down.

Poor baby, I wish I could bring over my homemade chicken soup..........LOL that would be turkey this week!! Rest up Miss Arlene!!

Arlene,stop sniffin the brugs!!!

save the pollen for us,you can't keep snorting it and not expect symtoms....LOL

hope you feel better soon......

I know that some kids were making a tea from the brugs and it does screw you up but have never been told that they are illegal in florids heck half the plants in florida will kill you if you eat them

Just think about poinsettias. They're poisoness and I'm sure just about eveyone has one in their livingroom at this time of year.

thanks for all the wishes guys. head/chest cold, i'm fine.
i bet 5 brug seeds wouldn't kill you like five castor bean seeds would!

I just saw Pual James say this weekend that they are not poison,(they just recently found out?).But the sap can cause an allergic reaction

CC - you mean Poinsettias, yes I heard that last year.

Here in MO we learned many years ago the dangers of taking Jimson Weed seeds. They are a powerful hallucinogenic and can permanently damage the central nervous system as well as the mind. A couple teens ended up as Jane/John Does in a state mental institution from swallowing a several. They are also know to kill hogs who eat them occasionally. I have heard they are the original Loco Weed. I had always thought that was marijuina but was told differntly a while back. I often soak torn up leaves and use the 'tea' for an insecticide spray.

I gave my youngest daughter some plants of D. Wrightii Regal a couple of years ago. When her husband, who is a farmer, saw them bloom, he had a fit. Called them loco weeds and she had to burn them.

I have a friend who swears he ate a cereal-bowl-full of Datura stramonium seeds once, back in his misspent youth. He says he took a rather bad 'trip' for three days, but otherwise suffered no ill effects. Wouldn't recommend trying it, however.
When I first started growing the things (brugs AND datura), I tasted the leaves to be certain that my pets wouldn't be tempted to munch down on them. Phew! I can't imagine ANYTHING with a sense of taste taking the second bite!

Angel's Trumpets were considered to be the home of evil gods. According to legend, if someone fell asleep in the shade of the Brugmansia, they would go crazy. It's true they have strong hallucinogenic properties and pose a threat to children if their fruits are eaten. from South Florida's Sun-Sential

Even the fragrance of the flowers may cause headache, dizziness, weakness, stupor and nausea for some individuals. However, most public gardens have at least one brugmansia plant, set away from the paths and people, a good plan in any garden. From the St. Pete Times

The only online info I can find says that occasionally the plants are smoked by teens for their effect. I could find no laws prohibiting growing them but it may be a local, not a state law. Here in Sarasota, it is legal to grow them.

I asked my BIL (who is a county Sheriff) it a child got into my yard, and ingested any part of my plant without my permission, would I be held libel if anything happen to him/her. BIL told me no, that I was not responsible for anything that happened because a part of my plant was stolen and used illegally. I still worry about it and won't plant any near the boarders of my yard.

OK, here is a question...I have wild baby ducks that think my backyard is theirs too! (not that I feed them or anything..well...just a 50lb bag of crack corn a week) LOL. I have seen them pull leaves off some of my plants. I guess they are just trying out things but do you know if they would try to eat a brug and would the leaves kill them?

FLSuncoast. Good point there. I often wondered the same thing.

This is not to scare anyone off. Handling Brugs and Daturas as we do is not in anyway dangerous.

In Sorø I had nightly guests on several occations. Mostly from September to the frost in November. On the street, where I lived and only a few houses away there was a house with cheap rented apartments, that housed drug addicts and I guess, that they found pleasure in my Daturas, when the season for Hemp and poppy was over.

It was mostly leaves missing. I hope, that they dried the leaves and smoked them. When the leaves are smoked, they will not be lethal, because the person smoking will pass out by an overdoze and unable to inhale more the alkaloids in will soon after leave the bloodstream.

Its different by eating or drinking it as a tea. Tea will reac a peak effect 2-3 hours after drinking and will wear off again 12-24 hours later depending on the quantum of leaves.

Most dangerous is eating this stuff. Everything, that enters the indigestion channel will be uptaken in the bloodstream and distributed to the cells of the body and brain. One of the effects of these alkaloids is, that they stop the movements of the indigestion channel, so the eaten substances will remain there for maybe 1-3 days and all that time the alkaloids will be uptaken and re-uptaken in the blood stream.

From working many years with Datura I know the light symptoms of the alkaloids from when I harvest datura pods. I am supposed to wear gloves, but always end up tearing them on the spines. *lol* I rarely experiences visual distortion, but sometimes a dry sense in the mouth (after harvesting an entire day from sun up to sun down). I don`t believe, that pollen is poisonous, as I never had any of these effects. sanguinea produce lots of nectar and I tried a drop or two and there was no side effects either.

I guess if I don't like their blooms, I can just stip off their leaves and smoke 'em then. lol

Gotta get some pleasue from those buggers:)

I guess I have to tell you all the Hellenistic, Greek and Egytpican myths first, before you consider stripping those leaves, Owen :)

... and to learn you to focus and maintain your concentration on a fixed thought as a lazer beam for hours. *lol*

Shamans and modern mystics sometimes uses Datura, Brugmansia and Peyote and other plants and fungus to investigate the hidden mechanisms, that lay behind our perception, thought and feelings. A not trained and instructed person would have no point of references about these mechanisms (the brain often percieve these as spirits), because only a few untrained can see these and remain sane. *lol* Especially Datura and Brugmansia produce a frame, where all a persons worst nightmares come true.

The reason, why old mythology still works is, that the brain hasn`t largely not changed since the dawn of man and mythology describe the mechanisms, that constitutes the world as we know it - no lilac sky, no spiders as large as empire state building that want to eat us up, trees to hunt us throgh the woods *lol* - the only thing, that has changed are the defences mechanisms, that the brain needs to produce reality as we know it complete with houses, cars, Brugs and computers and normally sized humans and animals. :)

Owen, I hope that you now will start to love any Brug, because it has its leaves on. *lol* *lol*

The incident with the three boys occurred in South Florida, in Broward County. The boys made a tea from the leaves, drank it, and ended up in the hospital. Although they were hallucinating for a while, they did not die. A short story on the incident can be found at: http://www.nbc6.net/news/1422777/detail.html

Thanks delecie, I have been told about this incident but never given a link to the facts. Thank you so much for the link.

Brugs are banned in parts of Central FL also. It's the municipalities/cities, not the state of FL, that passed the ordinances against brugs. I think there were two or three deaths (or at least near-deaths) here in the Orlando metro area a couple years back. I won't have one in my yard and worry about the one planted next to my backyard fence in the neighbor's yard. I don't want my dog to get hold of a leaf or flower--she likes to eat grass and greens in the back yard. And I'm not so sure you would get off scott-free if some kid came into your yard, picked some flowers/leaves, and died from them. I haven't seen any case law established to support this thought, but brugs could be considered an attractive nuisance (I think that's the correct legal term...) Good example: swimming pools in FL have to be fenced in to keep kids out; before fences were required, kids were attracted to the water of the pools and they were drowning in them. Just my two cents...

My dogs sniffed the brugs a couple of times and turned up their noses. AS for someone comng into your yard and stealing plant material, then dying from using it improperly---yes, I'm sure there's a lawyer or two out there that would try suing you over it. But there are TONS of other plants that are routinely grown as ornamentals that are MUCH more lethal than either datura or brugmansia!

I have had both cats and dogs playing in my Datura garden in 13 years. They eat grass as well as other plants, but they did not touch Datura or Brugmansias. They are very curious of the smell coming out of the flowers and appreciate it very much, but they resent the smell from the leaves.

Both Brugmansia and especially Datura emit an unpleasant smell from the leaves and branches, when they are touched, so no animals want to both touch them and to be near them at the same time. An exception to this rule is our oldest dog Terry, that like to play catch-mouse with D. stramonium seedpods, but first, when they have been removed from the badsmelling plants in the autumn, when we harvest seeds. He plays with them. Puts them carefully in his mouth and then throw them up in the air and then chases after them over the lawn. Nonetheless, he is seven years now and he never ate a seed.

In Denmark a plant named Monkshood is grown in plenty in most gardens. Monkshood contains THE strongest plant poison. To compare monkshood with Brugmansia I would estimate, that there is about 50 times stronger poison in Monkshood as in Brugmansia and Datura. However, noone here give this fact a thought. Also in Denmark hundreds of people are hurt in the trafic every year, but we haven`t gone back to horse wagons yet.

In my experience there are two kind of people getting hurt by Brugmansias. The first kind is kids, that aspire to become drug addicted. Some think this is cool, other from group pressure and to show, they they are not affraid.

The other type is the religious or occult seeker. Maybe this person have read about, how other cultures use Brugmansia, Datura, San Pedro or whatever to enter into the realms of the Gods, the astral plane, the genius or the higher self or whatever terminology I can use about it, but the main inspiration has always been Carlos Castanedas first and second book in the series of the teachings of Don Juan. I my self belongs to the last group, but I have never used drugs, because I learned pretty early that the same effect as drugs have for these people can be obtained by a little training and the realms be reached by the use of a strong interlect.

Here is a list of the most comonly grown poisonous plants in our gardens:

http://vet.purdue.edu/depts/addl/toxic/bytox1.htm#Extremely%20Toxic

I'm telling y'all if pollen was going to kill I'd be dead already!!! LOL