Shaggy sparrow-wort
Thymelaea hirsuta
Family · Thymelaeaceae · 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
The shrub with flexible branches and tiny tiled leaves that grows on sands and saline soils in the south. It is a relative of Daphne and shares what matters: the bark does not snap and the sap burns.
Dunes and sand · Scrubland · Roadsides and waste ground · Walls and rocks
Also known asboalaga, mitnan
How to tell it
Thin, very flexible branches covered in tiny fleshy leaves overlapping like scales, green above and white-felted beneath. Try to snap a branch: it bends and strips into fibres, it does not break. Insignificant yellow-green flowers in winter. Range: mainly a Spanish plant, practically absent from Portugal.
What it is confused with
Flax-leaved daphne
Daphne gnidium
Same family and the same trick of bark that will not snap. Daphne has larger, flat leaves, green on both sides, and bears red berries; sparrow-wort has tiny scale leaves, white beneath, and no showy berries. Both burn.
What it is for
The fibrous bark made ropes and baskets across North Africa and the southeastern Peninsula, and was used to stun fish, a banned practice. It is not eaten or chewed: the sap causes strong inflammation of mouth and skin.
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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