Beware! Jatropha is a large genus (nearly 200 species).....All of which are poisonous to some degree-several are deadly! There is one Jatropha commonly grown here in Florida that attains small tree proportions that for some reason many people think is a Pistachio tree (?). Nope; and eating enough of the "nuts" may kill you....not even in the same plant family as the real Pistachio. breaking g., where do you live in Northern Queensland?

Mornin' Lori- DH just looked at the pics. If he had to guess, he'd be inclined to say they got hit with Atrazine. He said it probably isn't going to kill the stuff, but is a little concerned about the maple tree. If you trim off the leaves, and take them to your county extension agent, they can either send them off to be tested, or tell you how to. I'd for sure get in touch with the farmer. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but it's his job to be resposible for his spray practices, and if you have damage, he's liable for it. I asked him how it would happen that the spray hopped a 4' strip of weeds and nailed your garden. He said that if the farmer uses quite a bit of atrazine, and swings the boom on the sprayer past that strip, the stuff in there has become resistant to it, so would take a lot stronger hit to show damage. So, I guess I'd start with a call to the farmer, and give him the opportunity to come and look at the stuff. Tell him that if he wants to look at it, he needs to do it right away, as you need to get the plants trimmed. I've seen this go two ways...total denial, or apologies and cooperation. I hope the second for you. Trim off the damaged stuff, and give everything a good, deep watering and see what happens. It looks as though most of the plants are going to come out of it. Get rid of the lettuce, you for sure don't want to eat it. Totally your call on how you deal with the farmer. Yes, I'd be ticked if my garden got nailed. Mad would happen if I got a crappy response from the farmer. I'd be inclined to give him the chance to do the right thing, accept resposibility, and watch what he's doing. If he won't do that, then in my book all bets are off. I don't know how Ohio works, but here, you can lose your applicators license over that kind of stuff. It happened to a guy who farms near us, and he had it coming. The ironic thing is that he can still spray Round-up. That just kills everything outright, but isn't considered a hazard to ground water, etc. As a farmer, I feel really bad that this happened to you...kind of gives us all a bad name :( I hope you'll keep us posted on how this all comes out. Personally, I think you can get farther with a kind word and a two by four than just the two by four. But, if the kind words don't work, grab a four by four and have at it. Best of luck, Brenda

were are you located? Have you thought about coyotes. does not look like the bear droppings I see in my area. unsanitary construction worker?

Thanks for the help, TB. You have a good guess. I thought maybe it looked similar to Anthurium jenmanii or perhaps Anthurium bonplandii. Or maybe an A. hookeri? There is a good page on the Exotic Rainforest site with lots of info about identification confusion: Anthurium jenmanii and Anthurium bonplandii subsp. guayanum I'll try to see if I can find out from where it came. Carol PS. I think "Japanese fern" was due to a mistaken identification as a Japanese bird's nest fern... which I'm pretty sure it is not.