Nasty rash after gardening

[70sShmeventies]

What could have caused this? It’s v painful blistered. I’ve been weeding heavily overgrown flowerbeds.

Did you break any skin? My.neighbour had similar and needed antibiotics.

This may sound weird but were there any caterpillars?

Meant to post this

Do you have any pictures of what you were weeding? Various plants can cause all sorts of reactions, including exposure to sun after touching the plant, or something to which you are specifically allergic.

Blisters is often phytotoxins from some kind of umbellifer, which causes the skin to blister in sunlight? I had it from bolted parsnips in a neglected veg garden once.

Not touched any hogweed have you?

Euphorbia?

Euphorbia or hogweed or monkshood most likely candidates. Take pictures of plants if you can.

If it's hogweed then it needs to be out of all sunlight.

Dogwood gives me an awful rash though.

DD had a blister like this (bigger but took a while to get large) which we think was giant hogsweed. I hope you didn’t touch your eyes - wash them out well in case.

ring 111

This was a few days ago, the blisters have scabbed over and are is flaking but the skin is very tender and burns. Bright red like a burn.

No giant hogs weed but cows parsnip. Euphorbia yes, but I was careful around that.

Monkshood - thank you everyone! It
must be that. I had wondered if it was that and it must be. I was well into it weeding happily eek. Have attached a pic.

This.

It's likely to be the cow parsnip.

For some people me light+ sap=huge blisters which heal leaving horrible pigmented marks. These do go eventually but I was walking about with what looked like self harm scars up my arms for months.

Emergency trip to GP, mention gardening and phytophotodermatitis and get some steroid cream.

I got mine from parsnips, euphorbia are another culprit.

https://dermnetnz.org/topics/phytophotodermatitis

Monkshood is really fucking dangerous! It’s super toxic. My mil nearly killed herself weeding it. Got the shits and nausea and sweats .

Eek, I think the time to see the GP has passed now as it’s receding. It came up last weekend and I just posted out of curiosity. No wonder I feel so unwell.

@AnnaMagnani i think this will scar. Looks bloody awful.

I used to get that from cow parsley .

The scars do go! But they take a long time doing so.

I didn't see a GP either. Suspect you need to go straight away to get the steroids going.

I also don't grow parsnips or euphorbia anymore.

Don’t forget about it. I have a small photosensitive patch on my leg (presumably from-an unnoticed drip of Euphorbia sap) and it reappears every year after the first real sun exposure. (Hasn’t happened this year yet )

Ouch....

I'm grateful for this thread, I might otherwise have incautiously waded into a border in my exercise clothes to tie up some flopping plants which have gone-over monkshood behind them. I need to put on trousers and a long sleeved shirt before that job!

This! I have laburnum and foxgloves etc in my garden, but draw the line at monkshood.

Sounds like it was the photosensitvity that I (and someone else I cross posted with- sorry can't remember) suggested. Yup, the cells may lose their ability to cope with sunlight permanently and need spf. Hope not in your case. Glad it's healing.

Cow parsley looks pretty identical to hogweed

Very glad I clicked on this thread, I had similar but on my bloody face after gardening a few months ago. I thought I'd just had an allergic reaction to something in the garden after touching my face with my glove, but it still tingles and visibly burns red with any sunlight exposure now, even though it's fully healed and otherwise disappeared.
The more you know!

I’ve never had reactions to euphorbia or monkshood, but once got awful burns from rue. I’m glad to see your burns are healing and hope there’s no long term effects.

Cow parsley has the same umbel arrangement of flowers as hogweed (they’re in the same family), but very different leaves, parsley compared to parsnip. Anyone looking at the leaves could not confuse them.