Oleander
Nerium oleander
Family · Apocynaceae · 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.
It is planted in half the country's central reservations and grows wild in southern riverbeds. One of the most toxic plants you will meet in a Portuguese town, and nobody suspects it.
Streams and ditches · Town and roadside · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known asrose bay, oleander
How to tell it
Long leathery leaves in whorls of three around the stem, with a strong central vein. Pink, white or red flowers through most of the summer. A broken twig bleeds milky latex.
What it is confused with
Olive tree
Olea europaea
Out of flower the leaves are confusable. Olive has a shorter leaf, silvery beneath and in opposite pairs; oleander has a larger leaf, green on both sides and in threes.
Open sheet →What it is for
None. Not for roasting, not as a skewer, not for smoke: burning it releases toxic compounds and a branch used as a skewer has caused poisonings.