3 Toxic Fruits That Look Like Blackberries That You Can Eat By Mistake

Late summer and early fall is when the tasty wild berries ripen and many people entertain themselves. harvesting them to eat them instantly or to make tasty jellies or jams with them.

When we go with small children through the countryside, it is easy for them to be tempted to grab those black and shiny fruits, so showy, and end up eating them. But you need to make them appreciate the differences. Not all black fruits or berries we come across are blackberries. Although the risk is quite limited, it is convenient to distinguish the fruits well.

3 toxic blackberry-like fruits

The blackberries are the infructescences of the uncomfortable brambles, and before deciding to harvest them, once ripe, it is necessary to be well familiar with their appearance, because some other fruits are toxic.

1. Get drunk or coriaria myrtifolia

On the Mediterranean coast grows a plant with fruits that, if not paid attention to, can be confused with blackberries, especially by children, with the aggravating circumstance that it usually grows next to the brambles, the thorny plant that gives the blackberries.

It’s the drunk goat coriaria myrtifolia, whose name says it all. Like the blackberry, more than a fruit, it is a set of shiny black berries (red before ripening) that grow at the ends and axils of the branches.

How to differentiate it from the blackberry:

As in the blackberry, more than a fruit, It is a set of shiny black fruits –red when immature-, about 4 mm, which grow at the ends and axils of the branches.

They differ from the blackberry because they do not have more than five or six berries and as a whole not to be completely spherical, but irregular. The berries are not spherical either, but half moons, and form small crowns.But above all you will differentiate it from the brambles by its leaves, which are bright green, sharp, hard, ovate-lanceolate in shape, with very marked veins. The brambles have leaves that are rough to the touch, green on the upper side and whitish on the underside, and their branches, as we will have experienced many times walking through the forest, are armed with sharp thorns, something that does not happen in coriaria.

what happens if you eat coriaria myrtifolia

Intoxication with borrachacabras could cause dizziness, dry mouth, abdominal pain and diarrhea, and if the dose has been unfortunately high, loss of consciousness, seizures and respiratory arrest may occur. For this reason, it is essential to separate the children from these fruits or alert them to the danger.

2. Privet Ligustrum vulgare

He privet Ligustrum vulgare It usually shares an environment with the bramble. Its resemblance to blackberries is minor. The fruit is a glossy, bitter and toxic black berry.

What happens if you eat Privet Ligustrum vulgare

The ingestion of its fruits is not as serious as in the previous case, but they can cause vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhoea.

3. Durillo Viburnum tinus

Another case is that of Viburnum tinus (marfull in catalan). Its bluish-black fruits, highly prized by birds, bear little resemblance to blackberries and their ingestion does not usually lead to more than upset stomach and vomiting.