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Text: Little Lamb
Edited by Little Lamb
Preface
With the continuous increase of urbanization rate, more and more people have moved from the countryside to live in the city.
Not only do I miss my childhood friends, but I also miss the scenery when I ran in the fields when I was a child, and from time to time I will pick some roadside wild fruits to eat, but I don't know that there are likely to be some poisonous plants in these plants, which will cause irreversible damage to our body.
Speaking of which, many people immediately think that it may be a poisonous mushroom, after all, once you eat poisonous mushrooms by mistake, you will experience vomiting, dizziness and other phenomena, and you may lose your life.
But there are no poisonous mushrooms in these plants to introduce to you today, but several "unpopular" plants, but they are very common in rural areas and deserve everyone's attention.
So the question is, what exactly are these "poisonous plants"? What kind of effects will it have on your body if you eat them? Maybe you've eaten them.
Castor bean, known as a "biological weapon".
The first is castor, which in some areas is also called red hemp, flax seeds or grass hemp, this plant is very adaptable, whether it is normal land, saline-alkali land, or very poor land can survive very well.
Not only that, the various parts of the castor bean's body also provide a great guarantee for human life, such as its leaves, which can be used to raise silkworms and help the development of the textile industry.
Its roots can also be used as medicine, with the effect of promoting blood flow, relieving pain, dispelling wind and dispersing stasis, etc., but to say that castor beans are well-known to everyone, and it is also the most important effect, but also the advantage that castor beans can be used to extract oil.
The oil squeezed from castor beans has not only become a good substitute in that era of scarcity of materials, but also an important raw material for chemical, light industry, metallurgy and other industries, and is one of the world's top ten oil crops.
With castor oil, more than 3,000 kinds of chemical derivatives can be produced, such as the shadow of castor oil in lubricants, paints and other items that we often see in our lives, as well as the title of "green oil", which is planted in dozens of countries in the world.
Take India as an example, its annual scale in the global castor trade is about 300,000 tons on average, you know, the world's castor oil production is only about 550,000 tons, India alone accounts for more than half.
Historically, China was also a large producer of castor beans, but due to the high demand, China has also become a major importer of castor beans, but in rural areas, castor beans are still common.
The reason why castor can have such a status is because the oil content in castor is very high, which can reach 50%, and it is worth mentioning that the sesame seeds that are also planted in large quantities have an oil content of only about 40%, which shows how big the advantage of castor is.
Not only that, castor oil has high viscosity and low freezing point, and can remain non-freezing in an environment of about minus 10 degrees, and does not solidify and denature at 500 to 600 °C.
But such a plant that has many uses in our lives, but it has the title of "biochemical weapon", why is that?
All this is attributed to the ricin extracted from castor, which is colorless, odorless, and extremely toxic, more than 6,000 times more toxic than cyanide, and just one gram of high concentration of ricin can cause thousands of people to lose their lives.
After being infected with ricin, the specific manifestations are: chest pain, respiratory pain, vomiting, etc., and finally death due to multi-organ failure, and the most frightening thing is that there is no effective drug to relieve this toxin so far.
Because of its high toxicity and low price, the toxin is often used by agents of various countries to carry out assassinations, and a writer and journalist from Bulgaria lost his life to ricin.
At that time, the reporter was only pricked by an umbrella on the bus, who knew that he had a fever that night, until the fourth day due to heart failure and died, after a doctor's examination, it was confirmed that he died of ricin.
And in our daily life, although the ricin content in castor beans is low, it does not mean that there is none, children will be poisoned after eating 2 to 7 pills, and then lose their lives, and adults are not much better, about 10 will be poisoned.
Therefore, when you see castor beans in your life, you must pay attention to reducing contact with castor beans, and do not eat castor beans, in order to better avoid everyone eating castor beans by mistake, you can make judgments in time according to the following characteristics of castor beans, and stay away from castor beans.
The surface of castor beans has some delicate patterns, which are very recognizable, and castor beans also appear in rural areas as trees or shrubs, with a height of about four or five meters, and the leaves are also very dense.
Maimo
When it comes to konjac, the first thing that many people think of may be that the popular snack konjac is cool, yes, this very refreshing snack is indeed made of konjac.
In addition, konjac vermicelli that can often be seen in our lives, as well as konjac tofu, are also made of konjac delicacies, and the application range is very wide, and the planting area of konjac is gradually expanding with the increase in demand, becoming an important agricultural product.
For konjac, the reason why it has such a great demand and is popular with so many people is not only because of its deliciousness, but also because it is a weight loss food and has a certain medicinal value.
In konjac, it contains a nutrient called "glucomannan", such a water-soluble dietary fiber is not easy to digest, but it has a certain sense of satiety, just like not eating, it will naturally not gain weight.
However, there are pros and cons to such characteristics, and if you eat too much konjac, it will lead to indigestion.
In traditional Chinese medicine, konjac is a thing that can be used both medicine and food, with the effect of dissolving phlegm and dissipating accumulation, detoxification and dispersal of knots, which has been recorded in detail in some books in ancient times, such as "Shennong's Materia Medica", "Famous Doctors' Records" and so on.
But what many people don't know is that konjac is actually a food that is toxic to the whole plant, but these poisons will only show when people eat them raw, and if they are processed correctly, these poisons can be completely eliminated.
Therefore, as long as you eat it after it is fully cooked, you don't have to worry about the risk of poisoning, and remember not to eat konjac raw!
This nightshade is not a nightshade
When it comes to the word "nightshade", many people may have only heard of it and don't know much about it, and the picture that comes to mind is also a famous TV drama character, but in fact, this is a proper "treasure plant".
As a plant native to China, its history of appearing in people's field of vision has been thousands of years, in the Tang Dynasty's "New Cultivation of Materia Medica" also called nightshade bitter herbs, in rural areas around the house, roadside, forest can see its figure.
The fruit it bears is not only rich in sweet and sour taste, but also contains vitamins C, B and K, as well as trace elements such as potassium and iron, which has a good effect on human health.
Like konjac, nightshade is not only delicious, but also has certain medicinal properties, it is known that it contains vitamin C that has the effect of boosting immunity, and potassium also plays an important role in maintaining the heart.
As for the claim that nightshade is poisonous, it is not groundless.
It contains a kind of "solanine" is indeed a harmful substance to the human body, so the question is, for some children who grew up in rural areas, picking the fruit of nightshade to eat is a very common thing, why is there no poisoning?
This is actually a problem of qualitative change caused by quantitative change, and only a large amount of ingestion of nightshade fruit will cause symptoms of poisoning such as vomiting and diarrhea.
It is worth mentioning that the content of solanine in unripe nightshade fruit is higher, and it is more likely to cause food poisoning, so we should try to avoid eating nightshade fruit in our lives, especially if it is not fully ripe, try not to eat it.
It is known as the "phoenix egg".
The iron tree fruit may be a little unfamiliar to its friends in the north, after all, it mainly grows in the southern region of China and is an evergreen tree.
It usually bears fruit around September and November every year, and it looks red or yellow, like pebbles, which is very gratifying.
Due to the fact that some iron trees are not tall, and they can often be found in rural areas or parks in southern regions, many people can pick them directly by hand, but they do not know that such actions are very dangerous.
Because the inside of the iron tree fruit contains an ingredient called "cycadin", although it is not toxic in itself, it will produce toxic substances after a reaction in the human intestines.
It has an effect on the digestive system, and some nausea occurs, so remember not to eat it after picking.
However, the iron tree fruit is not useless.
It is a very common herb in traditional Chinese medicine, and doctors will adjust the dosage of the drug according to its own toxicity, and take it together with other drugs, so that when used as a medicinal herb, there is no need to worry about the harm to the body.
epilogue
The world is so big, there are no wonders, nature has brought us valuable wealth at the same time, but also left us some places to pay attention to, we must respect the growth characteristics of each plant, live in harmony with them, and jointly maintain the environment on which we live.
We also hope that everyone can keep these precautions in mind to avoid irreversible damage caused by carelessness.