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.
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.
Open sheet →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.