Cherry laurel
Prunus laurocerasus
Family · Rosaceae · Can kill
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.
Emergency
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The most planted garden hedge in the country, and one of the most toxic. It has escaped into damp northern woods, where it behaves as an invader and shades out everything native.
Town and roadside · Oak woods · Walls and rocks
Also known ascommon laurel, English laurel
How to tell it
A large, very glossy, leathery leaf with two visible glands at the base. Crushed, it smells of bitter almond, which is the smell of cyanide. Upright spikes of white flowers, then black fruit.
What it is confused with
Bay laurel
Laurus nobilis
This is the kitchen confusion that matters. True bay smells of seasoning; cherry laurel smells of bitter almond and has a bigger, glossier leaf. If it does not smell like the kitchen, it does not go in the pot.
What it is for
None
Leaves and seeds release cyanide when crushed or digested. There have been poisonings from burning prunings in enclosed spaces.
The law says
An invasive alien species in Portugal. Do not plant or propagate it.
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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Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.