I wanted to write this post about a beautiful flowering vine that grows only in the South, called Swamp Jasmine. I have a gorgeous, large vine on a archway at my home, which we actually carried from our previous home. But in researching more about the Swamp Jasmine for this post, a made a startling discovery! The Swamp Jasmine is highly poisonous, in fact deadly, to humans! ncsu.edu
Let me start from the beginning. About six years ago my husband and I bought this Swamp Jasmine, or “Gelsemium rankinii” at Lowes, a very large chain hardware and garden store. I immediately loved the name because of the “Swamp” since I have lived in the swamplands of Louisiana for a long time. At the time of purchasing it I was living in Pearl River, home of the Honey Island Swamp Monster. There is was a movie made about this and even a doll! But that will be the subject of another post!
When we moved back to Bayou Castine my husband actually dug up this vine which was now very large and entwined on our iron archway, and moved it with us. It grows perennially, and in the spring and fall it blooms gorgeous yellow, funnel shaped flowers 1 to 3 inches in size. It is perfect for moist soil and even does well in floods.
The Swamp Jasmine is perfect for trellises and archways because it grows very quickly with beautiful green, waxy leaves and small green fruit. The flowers are not fragrant, but they attract butterflies and songbirds. It is found in Louisiana, as well as Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina. It grows best in full sun, 2 to 6 or more hours of direct sunlight a day, and can take partial sunlight the remainder of the day.
I love the Swamp Jasmine so much I wanted to write a Connect post about it, because you see it all over, even wild in Louisiana. But… it wasn’t until I researched this post that I found out it is classified as highly poisonous, in fact deadly to humans! There was no warning on the plant when we bought it, and we have touched many times. We could have put our hands in our mouths (gross). I guess we have been lucky, or did not realize any ill effects we had were attributed to the plant.
What I discovered is that the bark, flowers, fruits, leaves, roots, sap, juice, seeds, and stems of the Swamp Jasmine are all highly poisonous to humans. The symptoms they cause are sweating, nausea, muscular weakness, dilated pupils, lowered temperature, convulsions, and respiratory failure. Yikes! Well we get heat indexes of up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit here so we would have never noticed sweating, lol. But seriously, in 6 years, we have never noticed anything like this. I have shot modeling photos of my daughter all up in this thing. We won’t be touching it without gloves in the future! I’m glad I researched this post - it may have saved our lives!
One site Gelsemium Poisoning People For Fun stated “Gelsemium Rankinii, known as Rankin’s jessamine, swamp jessamine, or Rankin’s trumpet flower is native to the southern US. If you’re writing a southern gothic mystery, swamp jessamine might make a great plot device.”
Well that is the Swamp Jasmine, a beautiful, mysterious vine. Like a lot of the Bayou! Do you have anything similar where you live?
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Thank you for this interesting read on Swamp Jasmine @lynneannec . It’s always good to know a plant is poisonous but there is no reason to get over concerned. Although there are many poisonous plants accidental poisoning is a thing that rarely happens. Main reason for that is that most poisonous plants have a bitter taste are are not consumed in a deadly dose. A theory is that young children are most of the time not charmed by bitter tasting food is in fact a natural protection against poisoning. Most sweet tasting things are edible and can be (more easily) trusted. When we get older we mostly learn to appreciate also bitter tasting foods but by that time we also learned which are OK to eat and which are not.
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