Shaggy sparrow-wort
Thymelaea hirsuta
Family · Thymelaeaceae · 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 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.
Open sheet →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.