Frangula californica 🤢

Got sick today eating a few ripe F. californica berries. It's not often that I've seen that many ripe berries on the bushes - usually there are no berries are the berries are unripe. Based on what I read they have been used to make a coffee-like drink so I thought they were not that toxic. In the past I've eaten maybe a couple berries at the most.

But today there were quite a few ripe berries on some specimens along the Old Railroad Grade fire road so I had about a half-dozen. Unfortunately within the next hour I gradually become more nauseous, eventually vomiting.

One thing I will say - it helps to drink water to flush out your stomach - it's much better to vomit up the water with as much of the berries as you can expel, than to leave them inside.

At home now and feeling better but just a little bit tired.

I have now learned not to eat F. californica berries and paid the price. I'm glad my body did what it needed to do and expelled them. 🤢🤮

If there is anyone who is willing to back up my edit of the F. californica Wikipedia page please do. I just updated the Food and Medicine [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frangula_californica#Food_and_medicine] section of the page which previous said:

"The berries and seeds are safe and edible. The seeds inside the berries makehave anbeen excellent,used caffeine-freeto make [[coffee substitute]], superior to [[chicory]] and with overtones of mocha.http://honest-food.net/2014/08/13/california-coffeeberry-edible/. Accessed 15.6.2015.

Although the plant itself looks much like a coffee plant, its berries, which are succulent, do not, but they can be made into jams and jellies."

It looks like the creator of honest-food.net was trying to plug his website via the article.

Posted on August 3, 2020 03:20 AM by xpacifica