Plants

One of the Ig Nobel Prize was awarded for the legal recognition of the dignity of plants. And they are right to worry about their fate. Winners - Swiss members of the Ethics Committee - seems far-sighted people, because the plants are not so simple and harmless.

10th place: They are laughing at us!
In tropical forests can meet a huge phallus poisonous taller than a man. It is a flower Amorphophallus titanum, emitting a terrible stench that workers who care for them in the botanical garden of New York, working in gas masks, and after work, change their protective clothing.

9th place: They kill the competition!
One type of cane allocated rooted highly toxic acid. It breaks down the protein that makes up the roots of neighboring competitors.

8th place:
Scots pine, walnut or sunflower emit into the air compounds that inhibit the growth of its neighbors.

7th place: They are huge!
Cow parsnip Sosnowski, like a giant fennel, can grow in the wild, up to three meters. In contact with the skin appear hogweed severe burns, after which a person begins fever, which can result in death.

6th place: They are attacking!
Wood Zulu umdglebi exudes lethal gas and constantly surrounded by a toxic cloud. Escape from it can only be in windy weather, while the windward side. In other cases, inhalation of toxic fumes deadly.

5th place:
You should not be around long yew and boxwood. Boxwood contains approximately 70 alkaloids, so when you have a long walk may start vomiting and seizures.

4th place: Beware of water plague!
Waterweed, aquatic plant with thin branches, grows so much that can stop a big ship and to block the work of locks. Count the number of accidents and floods caused waterweed in the world, it is impossible.

3rd place: They are poisonous!
In the world there are about 5 thousand. Poisonous species of medicinal plants. Celandine and even poisonous lily of the valley. Sometimes plants poisoning affects the nervous system, because of what death may occur from cardiac arrest.

2nd place: They are poisonous!
Poisonous flowers potatoes (solanine poison), tops of tomatoes (and all Solanaceae), and all the melons, which include, for example, is so loved by many cucumbers.

1st place: They can eat you!
Surprisingly, live plants are able to feed on blood of mammals, which they need for life. Only with great difficulty a person emerges victorious in the battle with the plant-predator, in most cases, he dies.

© Anna Romanova





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