Toxic weed alert

[LONDONER]

When I was 9 years old, I woke up one morning with blisters on my hands. I went to school that day and my friend had blisters, too. We went to the doctor, who concluded that we had touched hogweed. The plant that was growing in our town wasn't THAT big - maybe hogweed and giant hogweed are two different things, or maybe the plant that we were calling hogweed was really something else. I think, a year later, I accidentally touched it again - I could see marks appearing on my hands but I put some Clearasil on it and it was fine. And look at me now - I'm a picture of health. I suspect that either the plant I touched wasn't really giant hogweed. I looked up pictures on the internet - I can't remember exactly what the leaves looked like but I remember what the stalk looked like. The pictures I found online of the stalk are as I remembered them but I suppose the stalk may not be that distinctive.

Don't discount the possibility that what you touched might have been an immature Giant Hogweed. They don't have to grow so high before they are toxic.

[Cuddly]

It is no joke or socialmedia hype. There are smaller plants that kind of look like them though.

These are called bearclaws in Denmark and if you spot them you need to report it, like if you saw a rat. They are very poisonous and multiply horribly efficiently, hence our government trying to keep them in check.