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EXISTS! The plant that leads to suicide

We have an ambivalent relationship with nature, which goes from the vision of plants and animals with which we can maintain a harmonious relationship, and that we also need to guarantee a balanced existence, and on the other hand the threatening jungle, full of bugs and willing to push back civilization and cover it if neglected.

The truth is in an intermediate place between these two poles, and just as there are dangerous animals for humans, there is also flora that can be harmful and even, as a curiosity, a plant that leads to suicide.

The plant that leads to suicide

In 1963 Ernie Ryder , an officer of the Service of Parks of Queensland, he was walking in an area of ​​this tropical region of northeastern Australia, when he brushed with his face the leaf of a plant covered with a fluff and known locally as gympie gympie ; what followed next was surprisingly painful:

“For two or three days the pain was almost unbearable, I could not sleep or work, and continued to be quite strong for the next fifteen days.He persisted for two years and repeated every time he took a cold shower...There is nothing that can rival him...it is ten times worse than any other pain.”

Ryder ran into a plant belonging to the family of the so-called urticaceae , the dendrocnide moroides , also known as "blackberry leaf sting", or as "suicide plant".It is a shrub species present in the rainforests of Australia in Queensland and in New South Wales, but also in New Guinea, the Moluccas and Indonesia, and the reason why it is known as the plant that leads to suicide is not exaggerated.p>

EXISTS! The plant that leads to suicide

From the first testimonies of explorers in the nineteenth century, to the encounters of soldiers with this bush, everyone agrees that is a Extremely unbearable pain , capable of taking you to extremes: in 1866 a topographer, ACMacMillan reported, while working on a road in North Queensland, that his horse brushed one of these plants, “was stung, got angry and died two hours later"; in 1920 the Dutch botanist H.J.Winckler reported deaths of human beings caused by leaves of dendrocnide ; and during World War II there were several reports of soldiers disabled by gympie gympie when they were barely in the training phase, and of an officer who could not stand the pain and committed suicide.

The hairs that cover the The leaves and fruits of this shrub, which usually measure between 1.5 and 3 meters high, are hollow and contain a sting of silicon covered by a powerful neurotoxin, the moroidine ; The painful madness of two weeks to two years can be avoided if the plant is barely touched using plastic tape or a tweezer, preventing the sting from detaching.It is also recommended to apply hydrochloric acid (diluted in water in a proportion of 10: 1).

EXISTS! The plant that leads to suicide

Although gympie gympie is defined as a colonizing species, that is, it occupies spaces where vegetation has undergone some kind of intervention, usually human, nowadays it is considered in danger of extinction.list on volunteers to take care of her?

Read 3 poisonous substances and dangerous plants for your cat.

Images: Henti Smith, melanie cook, Udo Schroter, Mr.lugosi.

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