Laurustinus
Viburnum tinus
Family · Viburnaceae · 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 that flowers in midwinter with white clusters and then bears berries of an almost unreal metallic blue. It is planted in half the country's gardens and the berries are toxic, which almost nobody knows.
Oak woods · Scrubland · Town and roadside · Streams and ditches
Also known aslaurustine
How to tell it
Opposite, oval, leathery dark green leaves with hairs on the veins beneath. Flat clusters of white flowers with pink buds, in winter. Metallic blue, almost black berries in summer.
What it is confused with
Strawberry tree
Arbutus unedo
They share the scrub and the leathery leaf. Strawberry tree bears a red bumpy fruit, which is eaten; laurustinus bears a smooth metallic blue berry, which is not. Fruit colour settles it.
Open sheet →What it is for
Ornamental and hedging. The berries cause vomiting and diarrhoea and are among the most common paediatric poisonings in urban gardens, precisely because they are pretty and at child height.