Redoul
Coriaria myrtifolia
Family · Coriariaceae · 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
The streamside shrub whose fruits look like glossy black blackberries and kill. It is among the most dangerous plants in the Peninsula precisely because the fruit invites eating, and there are fatal cases in children.
Streams and ditches · Scrubland · Roadsides and waste ground · Uplands
Also known asMediterranean coriaria, tanner's sumach
How to tell it
A shrub one to three metres, with four-angled stems and opposite, oval leaves with three strongly marked veins from the base, like myrtle. Discreet green flowers in a spike. The fruits are the danger: five fleshy segments turning red then glossy black, closely resembling a small blackberry.
What it is confused with
Bramble
Rubus ulmifolius
This is the confusion that kills children, because both grow by the same stream and both fruits are glossy black. Bramble has thorns, arching stems that root, and leaves divided into three to five leaflets; redoul has not a single thorn, upright stems and simple opposite three-veined leaves. Black fruit on a thornless plant is not eaten.
What it is for
None
It contains coriamyrtin, a potent neurotoxin: it causes convulsions, respiratory arrest and death, and a few fruits are enough in a child. The Spanish name comes from killing goats. It was used for tanning hides and for poisoning, and that is everything it has ever done.
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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