Herself’s Houston Garden

I receive a fair number of people who wander to my website looking for information on toxic plants. It is my opinion after gardening down here for almost three years that every plant in my garden that doesn’t have thorns is toxic. And some of the plants that have thorns are toxic as well. I try to cover topics that bring people to the website that I haven’t already covered. But there is far too much conflicting information on which plants are toxic and to what degree for me to feel comfortable writing about it.

Some excellent, reliable sources of information on toxic plants are:
The army medical site list of toxic plants. There is extensive information here.

Utah Poisonous Plant Guide is an extensive database with pictures of the plants.

We’ve only had one problem with toxic plants and pets. We had an English mastiff. She was a beautiful dog, but all looks and no brains. It came time for her to be fixed. It was January, snow was on the ground and it was cold. We brought her in for her operation and she spent the day throwing up plant material at the vets. He sent her home and wanted to know what we had let her eat the night before. Nothing of course, she was due for surgery, and just about everything outside had died back for the winter. We rescheduled a week later.

She again went to the vets and proceeded to upchuck plant material all over the office. Again she came home with stern warnings from the vet to quit feeding her toxic plants. ( And what kind of idiots were we anyhow? )

The third time we didn’t let her out of our sight and she managed to get fixed. We never did figure out what plant she had been eating the nights before vet appointments. We never had another problem with her or any of the other pets eating toxic plants in the yard. Go figure.

{Freya in her usual spot hiding under my desk.}