Wild privet
Ligustrum vulgare
Family · Oleaceae · Poisonous
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This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
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The hedgerow shrub with sweet, cloying white flowers in June and glossy black berries that stay all winter. It is in gardens everywhere and the berries are toxic, especially to children.
Oak woods · Streams and ditches · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside
Also known ascommon privet, European privet
How to tell it
Opposite, narrow lance-shaped, leathery, dark green leaves with a completely smooth margin. Dense clusters of small white four-petalled flowers, strongly scented. Glossy black berries in upright clusters.
What it is confused with
Narrow-leaved mock privet
Phillyrea angustifolia
Same family and similar leaves. Privet drops all or part of its leaves in winter and has obvious, scented flower clusters; mock privet is evergreen with tiny discreet flowers. Neither's berries are eaten.
What it is for
Garden hedging and wood for small pieces. The berries contain glycosides causing vomiting, cramps and, in quantity, cardiac disturbances, and are among the most recorded paediatric poisonings in European gardens. The leaves also poison horses.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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