Here's another attempt at identifying the plants and trees that I pass every day, but don't actually see.
I noticed this guy while on a run near the Pentagon. How sinister does he look?
Seriously, it looks like something I might see in a tropical rain forest, not along the sidewalk in Arlington.
I used my unscientific approach to identifying this guy: I typed in a bunch of attributes into Google Image search and perused the results. In this case, I searched for green spiky weed and on the first page of the results found this picture:
Apparently, I'd found some Jimson Weed.
As the spikes suggest, this sucker is poisonous. I mean, really poisonous. It's not often you see a warning like this on a plant you find on the side of the road:
Jimson weed is a dangerous plant in inexperienced hands, and an overdose is likely to be fatal.
Yikes.
While you can't eat it, and you probably shouldn't mess with it, the plant definitely has a lot of uses. Apparently, it can be used to treat asthma, Parkinson’s and the flu. It can also, apparently, be used as a hallucinogen and other recreational drug.
Yeah, so let's just leave this guy alone.
Still, it was a nice find in my local area.
Jimson weed flowers are quite beautiful but you're rightt; it isn't a plant that you want to experiment with!
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