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Australian Native Plants

Poison Plant on Dunk Island

16 years ago

On a trip to Dunk Island AU back in the late 80's my wife and I were told to avoid a native plant which was said to cause a severe "burn like" skin irritation on contact. It was explained that once contacted this irritation could return whenever the affected skin area got wet. Recently we were talking about our Australia trips to a Horticulturist friend and this plant came up. My wife and I both vividly remember being shown the plant (we thought it was called a Fire Plant)and being told to avoid it on our hikes. Our friend has never heard of this plant and after many empty Web searches we are starting to question our sanity. Can somebody out there tell us if such a plant exists in Australia? Thanks!

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Comments (2)

alisonoz_gw
16 years ago
I'm not sure - especially the recurrance thing (may be a bit of an old wives tale) but the tropical areas of australia do have a few nasties.
What you may have been told about is Dendrocnide moroides called "stinging tree" or "gympie gympie" it grows in broken areas of rainforest, a kind of plant defence barrier. Visitors to all parts of north Qld are warned not to touch anything they don't know in case it's this as the pain from the stinging hairs on this plant are apparently quite excrutiating.
(Maybe bringing out your holiday shots once a year just causes a reminder cos I don't know if any poison actually lingers in your system :-) )
trish_g
16 years ago
It could have been one of the stinging trees, Dendrocnide species, or perhaps the climbing nettle Tragia novae-hollandiae, which is a weak scrambler that tends to grow over and through bushes. I'm not familiar with Dunk Is flora, but these are all reasonably common plants in Queensland rainforests and dry rainforests.
People do issue dire warnings about them, but none of them are really as dreadful as they're made out to be. The effect of all of them is pretty much equivalent to the effect of an ordinary stinging nettle (Urtica species), which I'm sure you have in the USA. A sting is no fun, of course, and you can usually feel the sting for a week or so as it fades - but you'd hardly be in dire straits, unless perhaps you fell into a plant and got major stings about the face. As with ordinary nettles, the sting does tend to become more noticeable again if you get it wet.
We have our own Urtica species here, too. Could it have been that? (I have had stings from Urtica, Dendrocnide, and Tragia, and can vouch for the fact that they're really all much the same.)
There is also a thing called Burney Vine, Trophis scandens, but you couldn't call it poisonous. It a large vine which puts out long shoots. These are rough and can catch your skin and give it a scrape - rather like being licked by a cat's tongue but a bit worse and might leave a red mark on delicate skin . It is possible to get mildly "burnt" if pushing through rainforest where you might not notice the shoot - but the plant is hardly something one would warn tourists against.
They probably have "blind-your-eye" mangroves up there. Excoecaria of some sort. But to get into trouble from one of those you'd need to get the white sap on a bit of sensitive skin.
Is this any help?
Trish
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