Graceful but deadly - Tree Tutu - Coriaria aborea
Tree Tutu (often known by the shortened version 'tute') is an attractive shrubby tree with long drooping flowering racems, shiny paired, deeply veined leaves and new growth looking deceptively like asparagus. Quite handsome, but it's beauty is often overlooked because the whole plant is deadly poisonous, so much so that even honey made from the nectar of tutu flowers can make cause death in the people who eat it (bees though, seem imune).
The poison is known as tutin, the young stems containing more than the old. Because of their lush appearance, young tutu is often eaten by cattle, to disastrous results, and once killed a visiting circus elephant!
It is widely spread and plays an important role as a colonising plant after landslips or river erosion. Grows to 8m with a very short trunk or multiple trunks from a short base.
These photos taken in late October, Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.
Graceful but deadly - Tree Tutu - Coriaria aborea
Tree Tutu (often known by the shortened version 'tute') is an attractive shrubby tree with long drooping flowering racems, shiny paired, deeply veined leaves and new growth looking deceptively like asparagus. Quite handsome, but it's beauty is often overlooked because the whole plant is deadly poisonous, so much so that even honey made from the nectar of tutu flowers can make cause death in the people who eat it (bees though, seem imune).
The poison is known as tutin, the young stems containing more than the old. Because of their lush appearance, young tutu is often eaten by cattle, to disastrous results, and once killed a visiting circus elephant!
It is widely spread and plays an important role as a colonising plant after landslips or river erosion. Grows to 8m with a very short trunk or multiple trunks from a short base.
These photos taken in late October, Karori Wildlife Sanctuary.