Pretty Poison by photosynthesis
Open full image in new tab Members remain the original copyright holder in all their materials here at Renderosity. Use of any of their material inconsistent with the terms and conditions set forth is prohibited and is considered an infringement of the copyrights of the respective holders unless specially stated otherwise.
No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.
Description
This is a mountain laurel. Denise (MrsRatbag) identified this for me on another photo I posted a few days ago. When I looked it up, I discovered that it's a member of the blueberry family, but unlike edible blueberries, all parts of this plant are extremely toxic to humans & animals. Here's what Wikipedia had to say about it's toxicity:
"Symptoms of toxicity begin to appear about 6 hours following ingestion. Symptoms include irregular or difficulty breathing, anorexia, repeated swallowing, profuse salivation, watering of the eyes and nose, cardiac distress, incoordination, depression, vomiting, frequent defecation, weakness, convulsions, paralysis, coma, and eventually death. Autopsy will show gastrointestinal irritation and hemorrhage."
Pretty, but lethal...

Comments (9)
Pretty..... pretty dangerous!... beyond the beauty hides death. Great capture.
Fantastic flower and great colors !
Lovely shot.
Nice capture!
Scary capture!
So beautiful and so dangerous! Something to think about!
cool
Holy cow! I've always wondered why plant catalogs won't ship this to certain places. Maybe that's why!
This was a spectacular zoom!