Aconitum Death

Most of you may have heard this on the news today. A gardener died after grasping a plant known as Devils helmet . Its not one I know of , but its not particularly rare.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29949275

 

Its better known I think as Monkshood.

 

Just wiki'd it , here are some of its common names...........
monkshood, wolf's bane, leopard's bane, women's bane, devil's helmet or blue rocket.
Wolfs Bane is interesting , has it any connection with Weir Wolves ?

 

yep @clueless1 its monkshood

 

The thing that surprises me about the story is that I think I read somewhere that he was a professional gardener, and it was the garden he maintains that had the poisonous plant in it. So that being the case, I wonder how it could have happened. He surely would have known not to eat it, and to wash his hands after handling it and before eating his sarnies.

 

you would think so wouldn't you? it was one of the first things i learnt at college as we were using cut flowers

 

I nearly lost a puppy I found chomping on some, it came in with some farmyard manure thought it pretty so left it growing, Puppy started salivate realized what it was, poured some castor oil down its throat off to the Vets, He announced I
I had saved its life, Whew.

 

There's a whole lot of Bane's in the local names, bit of a clue there

Not tried it myself.

 

Basically, numb nuts employee forgets the basics but "ambulance lawyers 4 U" come to his rescue!

 

Aconite is also used in homeopathy, not that I've ever taken it.

 

Bit confused over this to be honest.
On the one hand I'm reading that it causes vomiting, diarrhoea and then heart failure and this happens reasonable quickly.
In this man's case, it lasted 5 days and he seems to have died of multiple organ failure
Seems he was also a member of RHS so well informed (?).
Think there is more to this.

 

Like Amanita poisoning. They're up at this time of year, but again, an experienced gardener would know not to touch.

 

the strange thing is that there are loads of un- experienced gardeners and they aint dropping like flies, with every poisonous plant they have in their gardens.

Just a bit of media hype.