Sunday, July 11, 2010

Giant weed that can cause blindness popping up in Ontario, B.C.

Sounds like something from a bad 1950s movie:

Ciara Byrne
Toronto— The Canadian Press



A weed that can grow six metres tall, sprout massive leaves and produce toxic, blindness inducing sap is creeping into Ontario and parts of British Columbia.

Giant hogweed is easily identified by its teetering height. The leaves on the weed fan out as much as 1.5 metres in diameter. It is also identified by its tell-tale purple splotching on the stem and its umbrella-like cluster of white flowers.

The plant, which was spotted around the coast in British Columbia in late June, and is known to flourish in the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley, Gulf Islands, and central to southern Vancouver Island, was discovered in the Renfrew County area in eastern Ontario on Thursday.

2 comments:

deBeauxOs said...

Those invasive, exotic plants have been around for 10-20 years.

You should try getting out of the city once in awhile, Chicken Little.

_Hamish on Twitter! said...

Timely post James, and since you've had two references to the beautiful Ottawa Valley this past week, i give you another!!!

http://www.thedailyobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2659262

"Giant Hogweed confirmed in Laurentian Valley"