In all my enthusiasm for amateur botany and mycology, I’ll tell you one of the most interesting things I’ve learned and encountered.

I sometimes think the societal reactions to mushrooms and plants are the reverse of what they need to be, in terms of threat.

I’ve seen so many times someone asking for identification for a plant, and they’ll say “Tastes like mint. Felt velvety.” Meanwhile, with mushrooms, I’ll see people who are afraid to get close to them, let alone touch or taste them.

Friends, those two reactions should be inverse. You could take the most deadly mushroom, amanita phalloides, and touch it with no issue. You could even take a little bite, chew it, and spit it back out, and be fine. In fact, “chew and spit” is sometimes used as an official identifier by mycologists! It’s only by swallowing a mushroom that you could be poisoned. I don’t recommend trying this test out with a possibly dangerous mushroom, because you could accidentally swallow it or something, and the risk doesn't justify the reward. But it's totally normal, and demonstrates the level of relative safety that you have.

Meanwhile, I see people happily touching, smelling, and tasting unknown plants, and you should NEVER do that. Just think of poison ivy, a relatively innocuous example. What's the worst that could happen? Well, it could really mess you up. But there are many far deadlier and more dangerous plants that look perfectly safe, and they grow all over the US. Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), which is now invasive in the US, looks like a giant parsley plant, and has "phytotoxic" sap. That means, if you were to cut it or pull off a leaf and get the sap on you, once exposed to sunlight you would get a burn. And by "burn" I mean severe blisters, scars, and lesions that can hurt for months to YEARS. If it gets in your eyes, you can get permanent blindness. That sap is in every part of the plant that's above ground, including leaves, stems, flowers, and seeds. It doesn't hurt when it gets on you, so you might wander into it and break a couple stems, or work on cutting it down, and have no idea for a couple days, until the symptoms start.

I first saw Giant Hogweed in Scotland. It is distinctive because it's enormous (the plants I saw were 6+ feet tall), but other than that it doesn't look like something as dangerous as it is. It doesn't have large thorns or anything.

Let's also look at the plant in the article, poison hemlock. We have that growing here in North Carolina, and I've seen it several times. It looks like Queen Anne's lace, and is from the carrot family too. However, it has stems without "hairs", and they have purple splotches. That's it! Otherwise they look exactly the same! Now, what can happen if you taste or get the sap from this plant on you? It can give you any of these symptoms (I got this list from the Cleveland Clinic):

Sweating.
Vomiting.
Dilated pupils (mydriasis).
Excess salivation.
Dry mouth (xerostomia).
Rapid heartbeat (tachycardia).
High blood pressure (hypertension).
Restlessness or confusion.
Muscle weakness and muscle twitches (myoclonus).
Tremors and seizures.
In more severe cases, hemlock poisoning can cause delayed complications such as:

Slow heartbeat (bradycardia).
Low blood pressure (hypotension).
Muscle paralysis.
Muscle breakdown and muscle death (rhabdomyolysis).
Kidney failure (renal failure).
Central nervous system depression.

The reaction severity can also vary between individuals; the man in this article didn't eat it, and was still in a coma for months.

Those are just a couple examples, but there are plenty of instances in which touching or eating a plant that you don't know can have terrible consequences. If you're bored, look up the Gympie-Gympie, or Dendrocnide moroides, a plant in Australia. Heck, brushing up against a stinging nettle will kick you in the teeth.

In conclusion, just treat unknown plants like your instincts tell you to treat unknown mushrooms. If in doubt about a plant, you can always reach out to me, I'm happy to help you figure out if something is dangerous or not.