what's all this about laburnums being poisonous?

[mogwai]

We have a lovely one in our garden. We cut the garden back quite a bit last summer, and since then the laburnum has really grown. It's gorgeous at the moment, sprawling outwards onto the lawn.

However, we have an 11 month old baby and I'm really worried about this tree being poisonous.

My husband reckons it's the seeds that are poisonous and that it will be ok in a month's time when the blossoms have fallen off and died.

(he knows nothing about gardening though!!)

Our lawn is covered in little yellow petals at the moment, my heart is in mty mouth and I can;t really let the baby play there.

What advice would you give me and should we remove it?

I wouldn't get rid of the tree - you have to teach children what is growing in a garden and what they can and cannot eat, rather than scaring them about everything. Most people do not know that sweet peas are also very poisonous, but still grow them. Perhaps a good lesson is also to grow plants which have flowers leaves that are edible - pansies, rose petals and so on.

In the victorian era they were used to make the drug Laudenham-- a highly addictive opiate. laudanum is an opiate, ie from opium. The active principle in Laburnum is cytisine.

OP No the Laburnum won’t flower again this year. Next year, you could trim all the flowers off your side rather than wait to catch the pods.

You can try to rid your own garden of poisonous plants (I don't think the list above was complete), what you can’t do is rid the world outside of poisonous plants. So eduction is vital whatever route you take.

Guess what else is poisonous...ZOMBIES!

One side of the infants' playground was lined with laburnums at my primary school. It always seemed like an odd choice, but I also don't remember anyone eating the seeds.

We grew up playing under a laburnham tree and knew very early on not to put anything in our mouths as it would make us sick.

My mother was a keen gardener and we had a large garden. There were lots of poisonous things in it, including deadly nightshade, foxgloves, monkshood, arum lilies and various other things, some of which came up wild, others were planted. Round the farm, we came across different lines hemlock and water dropwort. I have been good at plant identification from a young age, because she made sure we knew what was safe and what wasn't, and we had good reference books to I'd unknown plants and fungi, and learnt not yo put anything in our mouths unless we were very sure of what it was.

The one thing she refused to have was laburnum, because the pods were too like peas (we had lupins and other fabaceae/legumes, though,) whereas we were expected to learn to recognise stuff like monkshood. Not quite sure it's logical, by my sister and I have both survived, as have all our friends who played with us in our garden.

I worried about ours for a while but so glad I kept it. Moved in when pregnant, kids now 8 and 5. I wouldn't sit a baby under it but it's not long before they can learn it's poisonous. Also it's nitrogen fixing and the soil in my garden is absolutely wonderful because of it.

OPs children will be adults by now!