Purging buckthorn
Rhamnus cathartica
Family · Rhamnaceae · 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 northern hedgerow shrub that ends every twig in a thorn and bears black berries in autumn. The Latin name says what it does: it purges, and violently.
Oak woods · Scrubland · Uplands · Streams and ditches
Also known ascommon buckthorn
How to tell it
Twigs ending in a stiff THORN, and opposite or nearly opposite oval leaves with veins curving towards the leaf tip. A round black berry with three or four stones. Alder buckthorn has no thorn at all, clearly alternate leaves with straight, strongly parallel veins, and grows with its feet in water.
What it is confused with
Alder buckthorn
Frangula alnus
NO thorns, alternate leaves with straight, strongly parallel veins. It lives in waterlogged soils. It is also purgative, and also not eaten.
What it is for
None to encourage
The berry and bark contain anthraquinones and were an old pharmacopoeia purgative. In quantity they cause severe cramps, bloody diarrhoea and dehydration, and are especially dangerous to children, who pick them because they are black and shiny.
Where it occurs
Sources
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