From the About Phoenix Mailroom: Obnoxious Oleanders
Dear Judy,Well, RJ, let's break this down into a couple of managable pieces. First, let's talk about poisonous plants, then allergies, and then neighbors.
Oleander? I was amazed you listed this nasty toxic tree as #1 on the desert landscape list. These trees are highly toxic and a major allergy problem for many people.Their pollen and leaves get in your pool and the oil sheen floats on the top of the pool. I poisoned my neighbor's privacy row of oleanders with HCL over a year or so time frame so he would take them out. This weed should be outlawed in the state. The cheap cost is the only reason it is used. NASTY NASTY NASTY Tree. Please don't promote this nasty tree as there are so many much better alternatives to it.
Actually there are many poisonous plants used in the Valley, and elsewhere in the country, and there are others on my list of 7 easy desert plants (not mentioned in any particular order, I might add) that fit the poisonous category. Add to that dangerous plants, like anything in the cactus family, and we have a veritable field mine of danger lurking in our yards.
I'm not saying that oleanders are not dangerous. If they are ingested, they can be very dangerous. I will note, though, that when I called the poison control center in Arizona, no one there had any recollection of any accidental deaths by oleander going back many years. There are probably more accidental deaths by ingestion of chicken bones, in this country than there are by oleander. (They didn't say that, I did!) Now, if someone wants to commit suicide, they can probably do so in many ways, and eating parts of oleanders are on that list.
Oleanders, as I say in the article, are posionous, and you should be careful with them if you have children or pets. From what I have read, they taste so awful, that a person or pet has to be pretty set on eating any part of it to get it down, but it could happen. That's why I include the following warning in the article: "Just make sure that your children and pets don't eat the leaves or flowers, and don't use the leaves or branches for barbecue fires."
If you aren't ingesting parts of oleanders, you should be fine. Try not to get the sap from freshly trimmed leaves or branches on you as they could cause skin irritation. By the way, I hope you don't have any lantana in your yard....
With respect to allergies, from what I have read, oleanders have less allergens than many other flowering plants since they produce less pollen, but the pollen from other plants tends to stay on the long, wide leaves. My guess is that if one is allergic to oleanders, one is probably allergic to many other flowering plants, as well.
As for slowly and deliberately killing your neighbor's plants--I'm not even going there.
Oleander Photo © Judy Hedding
Comments
I just wanted tell a sad tale that happened in recent years here in El Segundo, CA. A family found two adorable preschool age orphans in the Soviet Union, took pity on them and adopted them. Six months later they found the poor little boys inexplicably dead. When the authorities did the autopsy they found oleander leaves in their stomachs. So please don’t make light of the truely dangerous characteristic of this plant!
Little children and pets can and will eat the most deplorable things. I also had a friend who had to rush her 5 year old son to emergency when he drank a whole cup of bleach that was sitting near the clothes washer to be dumped in the wash!
Hello, and thanks for your comments.
I didn’t at all make light of it. Horrible accidents can and do happen. As you point out, accidental deaths can occur from plants, household chemicals, and in many other seemingly safe situations, like backing out of driveways or riding a bike in the street.
It is important for people with children and pets to know that oleanders, like many plants, are poisonous. That’s why I mention that in my article about them.
I love oleanders. It is one of the few “plant and forget” trees that put up with our FL heat. I have 2 planted on both sides of my front steps. Our dog digs underneath the steps, laying right beside the oleanders. She has never tried to eat them (unlike the plumbego).
Wow, I’m glad he’s not my neighbor. I have brugmansia all over my yard, AND oleander, so he’s be poisoning mine all day long.
You might not want to go into his poisoning his neighbor’s plants, but I will. This man sounds like someone evil and vicious, who will find something wrong with anything, anytime. I’ve had a neighbor like that. He poisoned my cats, systematically, one at a time with anti-freeze. I had the last one autopsied, then my friend and I staked out his yard with a video camera and caught him putting out antifreeze at night for cats. He simply hated cats. We waited until the wee hours of the morning, went over the fence and stole his antifreeze, pan and all, and left him a note that if anymore of my cats died, we now had video and physical evidence that we were going to take to the police. People like this man are what needs to be kept out of neighborhoods, not oleanders.