Lords and ladies               Toxic

Lords and Ladies

This is a pretty little plant and often variegated varieties are planted in gardens. 

There’s 3 stages to lords and ladies, the leaves, the flowers and the fruits.

This is one I often come across when foraging and on courses. At all stages you wouldn’t want to eat this plant, believe me i've tried it and its painful. The plant contains calcium oxalate which is an irritant (it's like sucking on shards of glass!) 

Lords and ladies like to grow in the same habitat as wild garlic and often you will spot it amongst the leaves of garlic, and that's where the problem happens. It's very easy to grab a handful of garlic and not even notice the lords and ladies leaf in there. Thus checking every leaf before you start chopping up wild garlic etc is very important. 

Identifying features for Lords and ladies

• Heart/ arrow shaped leaves (ranging from finger length to hand length depending on the age of the leaf

• Its leaves are glossy waxy green and have a vein that gives the appearance of a border.

• Depending on the variant the leaf can have black splodges or white veins

• The flowers are similar to lilies in that they have a green leaf-like flower with a long purplish phallic looking appendage that is its flower. (this is where it gets the name lords and ladies)

• The fruit appears in autumn, and looks like a red hot poker. Its a single stem which is surrounded by reddish orange berries.

If you have all these features it’s likely you've found lords and ladies