Spurge laurel
Daphne laureola
Family · Thymelaeaceae · 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.
The shrub with leathery glossy leaves that flowers in midwinter in the shade of mountain oak woods, with discreet green flowers and a sweet scent at dusk. It is among the most toxic plants of the Iberian understorey.
Oak woods · Uplands
Also known aswood laurel, daphne
How to tell it
Dark green, glossy, leathery leaves clustered in a rosette at the top of bare stems, like a small bay tree. Yellow-green flowers in groups below the leaves, in winter. Glossy black berries in summer. The bark does not snap: it bends and strips.
What it is confused with
Bay laurel
Laurus nobilis
This is the confusion that matters, because one leaf goes in the pot and the other does not. Bay smells of seasoning when broken and has leaves all along the branch; this smells of nothing and carries its leaves clustered only at the top, with a bare stem below. When in doubt, smell decides.
Open sheet →What it is for
None. The whole plant is violently toxic and irritant: the sap burns skin and the berries cause severe inflammation of the mouth and gut, with fatal cases recorded in children. It is a relative of Daphne gnidium and shares the same compounds.