Madeira holly
Ilex perado
Family · Aquifoliaceae · Poisonous
Read this before the sheet
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
The holly of the Atlantic islands, without the spines of the mainland holly: the leaf is smooth, broad and leathery, and what stays is the red berry, toxic as in every holly.
Oak woods · Uplands
Also known asCanary holly
How to tell it
Alternate, broad, leathery glossy leaves with a smooth edge or few teeth, very unlike common holly. The leaf stalk is winged, which is perado's mark. Red berries in clusters, staying on the tree all winter. Range: Madeira, the Azores and the Canaries.
What it is confused with
Holly
Ilex aquifolium
Mainland holly has wavy leaves armed with spines, perado has them flat and nearly toothless, with a winged stalk. Both species' berries are toxic and neither is eaten.
What it is for
None
The berries contain saponins and ilicin: twenty berries are enough to seriously poison an adult and far fewer a child, with vomiting, diarrhoea and drowsiness. They are red, shiny and stay on the tree when nothing else is left, which is exactly the problem.
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
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.