Ethnophytotoxicological assessment of toxic flora in Samba District, J&K: The 'first' voucher-linked baseline study.
Bhawna, Sharma AK, Sambyal S, Singh A.
Ethnobotany
Seeds and milky sap are the two most dangerous plant parts in this 93-species catalog — a reminder that the intriguing textures and structures you notice on a nature walk are often precisely the features plants evolved to make their chemistry lethal.
Scientists walked every corner of a rural Indian district asking farmers and herders which plants had harmed their animals, then preserved physical specimens in a university collection to prove exactly which species they were talking about. They found 93 toxic plants, with seeds and milky sap being the most dangerous parts, and gastrointestinal poisoning being the most commonly reported problem. Perhaps most striking: the people who knew the most about dangerous plants were in their late 50s and 60s — meaning this hard-won, life-saving knowledge is at serious risk of disappearing.
Key Findings
93 toxic plant species were documented and GPS-verified, with seeds (37.1%) and latex/milky sap (21.0%) identified as the most dangerous plant parts
Cardiac toxicity showed the highest community consensus (ICF = 0.98), while gastrointestinal poisoning was the most-reported problem with 443 use-reports spanning 35 different species
Traditional knowledge of toxic plants was concentrated in the 56–65 age cohort and differed significantly by both age (p < 0.001) and gender (p < 0.001), flagging this expertise as endangered intergenerational knowledge
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers in northern India completed the first verified catalog of 93 toxic plants in a farming and herding region, documenting which plants most frequently poison livestock and matching community knowledge to herbarium-confirmed specimens — creating a reproducible safety baseline where none previously existed.
Abstract Preview
Phytotoxins-bearing flora in agro-pastoral landscapes poses persistent veterinary and zoonotic risks, yet no voucher-verified, georeferenced inventory of toxic flora existed for District Samba, U.T...
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