Got a green thumb? Does your landscaping look marvelous? Do your houseplants thrive? As good as it makes you feel to look at all those healthy, lush plants, be aware that some of our favorite ones are anything but healthy for our pets.
Innocuous and ubiquitous English ivy is a killer — a regular botanical 007. We use it for ground cover; it’s in nearly every green arrangement from a florist, it’s an easy houseplant to hang up in a window or let drape down off of the bomber chest in the foyer. The leaves and berries can cause severe stomach irritation, labored breathing, diarrhea, coma and death.
Hydrangea is another favorite plant. The foliage is showy and the bloom heads are stunning, fresh or dried. Those leaves and buds are also painfully toxic, causing inflammation and irritation in the digestive tract that can result in bloody diarrhea. So many spring bulbs are poisonous as well, and dogs that like to dig, like Terriers, are more at risk for getting into them, especially since they will use their mouths to clear obstructions from their excavations.
Tulips, gladiolus, shy lily of the valley and autumn crocus — not quite so shy as it’s also known as “naked lady,” amaryllis, iris, narcissus, hyacinth, day lily, elephant ear . . . A good rule of thumb is to assume that if it is a bulb, your dog shouldn’t have it in his mouth. The same rule applies for the lily family. Most of them are lovely, but unpleasantly poisonous. It’s probably part of the way they survive in their natural habitat — wild animals know better than to eat them.
Happy Holidays and don’t eat the poinsettias. They aren’t lethal, but they will cause an awful lot of membrane irritation and discomfort.
Two of the standards for landscapers, English and Japanese yew, are lethal, inducing breathing and heart difficulties, trembling, weakness, abdominal pains and sudden death.
If you live in more southern areas, keep your dogs away from your lantanas. The leaves and berries can cause weakness, sluggishness, and death can come in two to four days. Azaleas are another plant to keep an eye on in warmer climates, as are oleanders. The two are related and can cause anything from fairly mild stomach upset to an abnormal heart rate, coma and death.
Poke or pokeweed and jimson weed, known in town as datura, are a couple of rural killers you run into down in the southern farmlands. Often found in pastures, they’re not only toxic to dogs, causing a nasty array of symptoms from diarrhea to death, but they are a problem for cattle as well — and it’s common for them to spring up in pastures. As the winters have gotten less severe, these southern pests are working their way farther north.
The leaves of the wild cherry tree, once they’ve begun to dry out, become poisonous. That’s one of those things you can’t imagine any dog nibbling on, but the sheer variety of what some dogs will put in their mouths is stupefying. Hemlock . . . well considering what it did to Socrates, you really don’t want your furry little buddy to get into it. Muscle spasms, convulsions, foaming at the mouth and death within a few hours.
Castor beans have become a popular decorative landscape plant, and it’s been around since the ancient Egyptians, but don’t eat the beans — which aren’t really beans. Castor oil is taken from the seeds, but their outer covering contains the deadly poison, ricin. The castor plant has the distinction of being arguably the most poisonous plant on the planet.
Heavenly Bamboo, or nandina, is poisonous in all its parts, the toxic agent is hydrocyanic acid. The plant does take care of getting itself propagated, though, since birds aren’t susceptible to the poison and they eat the berries and drop the seeds on their flight.
The case for aloe vera being classified as a toxic plant is up in the air. The yellowish pulp nearest the skin contains a significant amount of aloin, which is an irritant in the digestive system. About the only real consequence of noshing on the fleshy plant is diarrhea. Not something you want your dog to get into, but not deadly.
Until you’ve checked, it’s always best to keep pets out of the houseplants and the landscaping. It’s a cliché, but true — better safe than sorry.
