Toxic Lookalikes of Edible Flowers and Greens: Laburnum, Foxglove and More

Toxic lookalikes of edible flowers and greens end up on plates every year. In France, poison control centers recorded 1,872 people from 2012 to 2018 who ate a poisonous plant thinking it was edible. Seventy-five of them got sick after picking laburnum blossoms instead of black locust blossoms for fritters. The French food safety agency ANSES published the data in 2019.

People rarely mistake one flower for another: laburnum and black locust are close to the only example. Far more often, someone picks the leaves or digs up the bulb of a plant that hasn’t bloomed yet, so there’s nothing to recognize it by. In the ANSES data, 31% of mix-ups involved leaves and 17% involved bulbs. Below are eight pairs and groups of lookalikes with documented poisonings, and what they mean for anyone who picks or buys flowers for the kitchen.

Laburnum instead of black locust

Laburnum (Laburnum anagyroides, golden chain tree) is poisonous, and its hanging clusters look like the clusters of black locust, which Europeans call acacia and fry into fritters. ANSES names this exact pair: people eat black locust flowers and pick laburnum flowers by mistake. Laburnum contains the alkaloid cytisine. Among the 75 French cases with symptoms, people had digestive upset, a racing heart, weakness, dizziness, and headaches, and in worse cases tremors, confusion, and seizures.

The Marseille poison control center logged 57 laburnum cases from 2002 to 2023. One was severe: the patient believed laburnum was edible, brewed an infusion, and ended up in the ER with cardiovascular collapse a few hours later. German poison centers list laburnum among the plants behind the most severe poisonings in children.

The main difference is easy to see: black locust flowers are white, laburnum flowers are yellow. Color isn’t proof on its own, though, since black locust also comes in pink varieties. If you don’t know the tree, don’t pick from it. Which parts of black locust are edible is covered in the acacia flower profile: only the flowers are eaten, and the rest of the plant is toxic.

Autumn crocus, lily of the valley, and false hellebore instead of wild garlic

Wild garlic (ramsons) has three dangerous lookalikes, and the worst is autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale). In spring its leaves come up next to wild garlic, but it flowers in fall, so in spring there’s no flower to give it away. In Slovenia, 16 adults were hospitalized from 2000 to 2019 after eating autumn crocus leaves instead of wild garlic. Four of them died. Adding 58 more published cases, the combined death rate came to 35%.

Autumn crocus contains colchicine. The first symptoms, vomiting and diarrhea, started 1 to 9 hours after the meal, and nearly all the Slovenian patients went on to develop bone marrow suppression. In Austria, the poison center received 174 reports of suspected autumn crocus poisoning from 2002 to 2018, and 113 of them involved children under 15.

Lily of the valley and white false hellebore (Veratrum album) also get picked instead of wild garlic. One report describes four adults, ages 24 to 45, who put false hellebore in soup and salad instead of wild garlic. Within 15 to 30 minutes they had vomiting, dizziness, and temporary blindness, their heart rates slowed, and their blood pressure dropped. All recovered within one to two days. In New York, three people foraged what they thought were ramps, the American cousin of wild garlic, and landed in the ER with the same slow heart rate and low blood pressure. The plant sample tested positive for a compound found in false hellebore. False hellebore is also mistaken for the root of yellow gentian, which is used to make bitters and liqueurs.

Foxglove instead of borage

Before it blooms, foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) grows a rosette of leaves that resembles borage and comfrey, and it contains cardiac glycosides. In Germany, two women, 35 and 60, made a vegetable dish with leaves from their garden, one of which was supposed to be borage. Severe vomiting started two hours later, and digitoxin levels in both were 2 to 3 times the upper therapeutic limit. In Italy, a woman put five leaves of a plant bought at a garden center as borage into a savory pie and was admitted to cardiac intensive care, where episodes of heart block were recorded. All three recovered.

Notice the Italian case: the plant was sold labeled as borage, so the mistake happened before anyone started cooking. In southern Italy, young borage leaves are also confused with mandrake. Borage and foxglove flowers look nothing alike, so the safest time to pick borage is when it’s already in bloom. More about the plant itself is in the borage flower profile.

Daffodils instead of onions

Bulbs of ornamental flowers, daffodils first of all, caused the most cases with symptoms in the French data, about 200, but none were severe. People mistook them for onions, garlic, and shallots, and the poisonings came down to digestive upset, headaches, and trembling. Bulbs keep for a long time, so these mix-ups happened year-round, mostly in fall and winter.

Daffodil leaves without flowers are a risk too. In 2012 in the UK, 11 people were poisoned by daffodil stems and bulbs sold at a market next to scallions and Chinese chives. Chives are eaten flowers and all, as the chive blossom profile explains, but buy them from someone who knows what they’re selling.

Monkshood instead of lovage

Monkshood (Aconitum napellus) is the most dangerous lookalike on this list. In Marseille, one of six monkshood mix-ups ended in death, and two more were severe. In June 2018, a 78-year-old hiker in the French Pyrenees picked leaves he took for an edible mountain plant. The monkshood hadn’t bloomed yet and had none of its blue-purple, helmet-shaped flowers, so nobody recognized it. Within an hour, his heart rhythm became irregular, and he died.

Monkshood is a popular ornamental, and it can end up growing right next to kitchen herbs. In Germany, a couple aged 69 and 71 ate a dish with herbs from their garden that included monkshood leaves from a plant growing near their lovage. Both ended up in intensive care with heart rhythm problems and recovered. If monkshood grows in your flower bed, don’t plant edible herbs next to it.

Poison hemlock instead of parsley

Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and fool’s parsley have leaves that resemble flat-leaf parsley. In the French data, this pair accounted for 4% of all mix-up files, and in Marseille one hemlock case was severe. ANSES also mentions hemlock water dropwort, mistaken for wild carrot: of 21 cases with symptoms, one was severe, and possible outcomes include seizures, kidney failure, and cardiac arrest. It’s best not to forage wild plants with white, umbrella-shaped flower heads at all unless you’re with someone who knows them well.

Oleander and cherry laurel instead of bay laurel

Oleander was the most common cause of mix-ups in Marseille: 289 of 2,197 cases, or 13.1%. The authors explain that it’s easily confused with edible bay laurel and grows everywhere in the region. Only one case was severe. Cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) also has leaves like bay laurel and contains cyanogenic glycosides. So take bay leaves from a package or from a plant you know for sure.

Jimsonweed instead of spinach

Young jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) gets mistaken for spinach, and such leaves have even turned up for sale. ANSES describes a case where jimsonweed leaves were sold at a market as spinach: six people were poisoned, including children aged 3 and 4. The seller was never found. In Marseille, two of 24 jimsonweed cases were severe, and one patient needed an antidote.

Restaurant flowers aren’t a guarantee either

Even flowers served as edible haven’t always been checked for safety. In 2016, the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration visited 150 restaurants and local producers and found out which flowers of 23 plants they used. Toxicologists at the Technical University of Denmark assessed each one against published data. Nine contained compounds with toxic or potentially toxic effects. Two more contained toxic compounds that couldn’t be identified. Another four were flowers of plants with toxic compounds in other parts or in related species. That’s 15 of 23, and for many of the flowers, the authors found almost no chemical or toxicological data at all.

Flowers from a florist carry a different problem: they’re treated with products never meant for food. That’s covered in why florist flowers don’t belong on your cake.

How to avoid a mistake

Don’t eat a plant you’re not sure about: no photo or description is enough to identify it with certainty, ANSES says. Plant ID apps don’t solve this either. In a 2023 test, four popular apps named the right species only 58% of the time, and at least one of them labeled 5 of 11 potentially toxic species as edible. The authors concluded that apps can’t be trusted to pick edible plants.

What ANSES recommends:

• Don’t pick by the armful: that’s how several species end up in one bunch.
• Photograph what you pick. If someone gets poisoned, it helps doctors identify the plant.
• If a dish tastes unusual or unpleasant, stop eating right away.
• At the slightest doubt, show the plant to a botanist or an experienced gardener.

If vomiting, dizziness, or an irregular heartbeat starts after a meal with foraged plants, call 911 or Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222, and keep what’s left of the plant. The same rules apply to mushrooms, where folk tests for poison don’t work either: see why the silver spoon test can’t find the poison.

Quick reference: which plant looks like which

Most of these plants are easy to recognize by their flowers, but they were picked before the flowers appeared. So here’s a simple rule for the garden and the woods: if you’ve never seen a plant in bloom, don’t pick it. To see which edible flowers bloom when, check our edible flower bloom calendar.