Sea daffodil
Pancratium maritimum
Family · Amaryllidaceae · 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 huge white flower opening on the bare dune at the height of summer, when everything around is dry, releasing an intense scent at dusk. It is among the most threatened coastal plants.
Dunes and sand
Also known assand lily, sea lily
How to tell it
Twisted blue-grey strap leaves rising from a bulb buried deep in the sand. A thick stem with three to fifteen white flowers ten to fifteen centimetres across, with six narrow segments and a membranous funnel-shaped central corona with twelve teeth. A strong sweet scent at night, to draw hawkmoths.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
None. It contains lycorine and pancratistatin and the bulb is toxic. The real problem is different: populations have vanished from much of the coast through trampling and people digging bulbs for the garden. Walking on the dune where it grows is enough to kill it.
The law says
Protected in Portugal and in several Spanish regions. Do not pick it, do not dig it and do not leave the boardwalks on the dune.