Known colloquially as the gympie gympie (from the Gubbi Gubbi/ Kabi Kabi name for the plant, gimpi gimpi), gympie stinger, and giant stinging tree (D. excelsa), this plant has the dubious honour of being arguably the most painful plant in the world.
Dendrocnide moroides, commonly known in Australia as the stinging tree, stinging bush, Queensland Stinger or gympie-gympie, is a plant in the nettle family Urticaceae found in rainforest areas of Malaysia and Australia. It is notorious for its extremely painful and long-lasting sting.
One of the world's most venomous plants, the Gympie-Gympie stinging tree can cause months of excruciating pain for unsuspecting humans.
Known as Gympie-gympie in Australia and salat in Papua New Guinea, contact with this leaf can result in human death, more often extreme pain that can last for months. Stinging hairs deliver a potent neurotoxin when touched.
Gympie gympie
The stinging leaves trigger an intense allergic reaction in its victims, sometimes even causing anaphylactic shock. The sting can cause excruciating, debilitating pain for months; people have variously described it as feeling like they are being burned by acid, electrocuted, or squashed by giant hands.
These include the nocturnal leaf-eating chrysomelid beetle and even a small marsupial known as the red-legged pademelon. Humans can eat the juicy fruit of the gympie-gympie, but only if they have taken the time to properly and painstakingly remove every one of its hairs.
A British man has grown the Gympie-Gympie, the 'world's most dangerous' plant in his garden. Native to Australia, the sting of the shrub feels like being burnt with 'hot acid and being electrocuted' simultaneously. The pain is so excruciating it can drive people to suicide.
Given that plants do not have pain receptors, nerves, or a brain, they do not feel pain as we members of the animal kingdom understand it. Uprooting a carrot or trimming a hedge is not a form of botanical torture, and you can bite into that apple without worry.
Gympie, city, southeastern Queensland, Australia, lying on Gympie Creek and the Mary River. It was first known as Nashville, after James Nash, who discovered gold there in 1867; its present name comes from gimpi-gimpi, the Aboriginal word for the stinging tree.
Deadly Nightshade
The flowers of this plant are small, reddish purple and tubular shaped, but it is the berries that are the most deadly part of the plant. The atropine found in belladonna disrupts the nervous system and can destroy the body's ability to regulate breathing and heart rate, leading to death.
Tobacco use causes more than 5 million deaths per year, making it perhaps the most deadly plant in the world.
Wild lettuce extract, or lactucarium, has long been used to relieve pain. Lactucarium contains lactucin and lactucopicrin. They are bitter substances that act on the central nervous system to produce pain-relieving and sedative effects ( 4 ).
Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have enlisted one of the oldest known medicinal plants as a potent painkiller. Euphorbia resinfera , a cactus-like plant, is a member of the euphorb family, of which there about 2000 species. The active ingredient, resiniferatoxin, was isolated in the 1970s.
Crocodiles have been known to be as far south as the Mary River in Gympie. This is only about 167km from Brisbane and only 52km from the Great Sandy National Park.
In 1867 a discovery of alluvial gold in a gully near the Mary River began the first major gold rush in Queensland, rescued the colony's economy and founded the mining town of Gympie. Today tourists and holiday-makers can try their luck in a gold-bearing gully in the town.
Most likely, yes, say animal welfare advocates. Lobsters belong to a family of animals known as decapod crustaceans that also includes crabs, prawns, and crayfish.
Plants may not have feelings but they are indeed alive and have been described as sentient life forms that have “tropic” and “nastic” responses to stimuli. Plants can sense water, light, and gravity — they can even defend themselves and send signals to other plants to warn that danger is here, or near.
Don't look now, but that tree may be watching you. Several lines of recent research suggest that plants are capable of vision—and may even possess something akin to an eye, albeit a very simple one.
For humans and other vertebrates, the tarantula hawk has one of the most painful stings on the planet. American entomologist Justin Schmidt created the sting pain index, with the help of variably willing or unwitting test subjects.
It can be found in similar places to nettles, like meadows and damp understorey areas. Dock leaves don't just relieve stings – they're also a food plant for the small copper butterfly.
Urtica incisa, commonly called scrub nettle, stinging nettle, and tall nettle, is an upright perennial herb native to streams and rainforest of eastern and southern Australia, from the north–east southwards through the east, of Queensland and New South Wales, then across the south, through Victoria, Tasmania, south- ...