What is the most dangerous tree on the planet?

Let's imagine this situation: you are vacationing in the Caribbean. Or in Brazil. Or in America (Central, and maybe North or even South). Actually, everything is great and wonderful. And then one day you are walking along the coast and you see a beautiful sprawling tree (either an apple tree or a guava), the sand under it is strewn with small, but very fragrant fruits. They look so green and attractive. Mmm... That’s exotic! And these fruits are straight from the branch, without any GMOs and pesticides. You take one fruit and carefully bite into it. It is sweet and juicy. Yummy!

A minute, another one passes ... then suddenly it starts to seem to you as if you ate some napalm and washed it down with sulfuric acid. It burns so much! It's impossible to swallow! Your throat spasms and water does not help! You feel sharp pain in the stomach! What's happening?

If you just tasted the fruit, then the chance of survival for you remains very good, although the consequences will come around for quite some time. If you ate the whole “apple”, then it is unlikely that you will be able to survive. The tree, the fruits of which smell so intoxicating and alluring, is popularly called the "death tree." Scientists gave it the name mancinella (also known as manzanilla and manchineel).

Why is manchineel dangerous?

Everything about Mancinella is dangerous. The bark, the fruits, the leaves, and the flowers, and even the dew falling from the branches, are poisonous in manchineel. At one time, the insidious tree took the lives of several hundreds Spanish conquistadors, pirates and ordinary European sailors who tried to ease their hunger and thirst with its fragrant sweet fruits. Mancinella continues to kill until now, because it is not always surrounded by a fence and signs warning of danger. It happens that tourists suffer from it, and not only those who carelessly tasted the deadly "apples", but also those who rested in the shade of a sprawling crown or waited out the rain under it.

Mancinella is the most dangerous tree in the world and for its outstanding poisonous properties it is even listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

The manchineel tree comes from the Euphorbiaceae family and belongs to the evergreens. It blooms all the year round. It loves moisture very much, therefore it most often grows on the sea coasts, where it suffers greatly from the effects of gusty winds, which is why its branches are deformed and the crowns take on very bizarre shapes.

Like many other plants of the euphorbiaceae family, manchineel contains milky juice, which contains a poisonous substance - phorbol, the strongest carcinogen. Juice has a toxic effect on the human body, strongly irritates the skin and mucous membranes. Even a few drops cause severe burns, blistering, and can burn through even cotton fabrics. If a person has been in contact with manchineel wood for a long time, then the risk of cancerous tumors is significantly increased for him.

Eating the fruits of mancinella leads to a burn of the esophagus and throat, and the ingress of juice into the stomach causes perforation of its walls. If the juice gets into the eyes, then even the smallest amount will lead to complete blindness.

Finally, phorbol toxin is highly soluble in water, so if you take shelter under the branches of a tree from the sun or in the rain, poisonous dew from the leaves can get on your skin, which will cause severe burns. Getting phorbol into any, even the smallest open wound, inevitably leads to fatal poisoning.

In general, the tree is so dangerous that in the middle of the XVIII century its total felling was arranged on the island of Puerto Rico. Alas, they didn’t manage to destroy the manchineel. During the felling, the poisonous milky juice fell on the lumberjacks, causing them to receive severe burns and blindness.

Then an attempt was made to burn the trees. However, the smoke generated during combustion turned out to be no less dangerous. It corroded the eyes, irritated the respiratory tract and caused severe headaches. Due to the extreme toxicity of the manchineel, all attempts to control the poisonous tree have ended in failure.

Now manchineel wood is still being harvested. It belongs to valuable rare breeds, has a beautiful dark shade and is quite durable. It is used to make furniture. However, to this day, the procurement of raw materials is difficult and dangerous. Since the tree cannot be cut down (remember that a person cannot even touch the bark), fires are made around it before felling, which allows the manchineel to be dried with smoke. However, even this treatment does not lead to complete evaporation of the juice.

After drying, the tree is felled and sawn very carefully. This is a rather risky process. However, manchineel furniture is not dangerous. During processing, the poisonous juice is completely removed, so the final products cannot exude toxins.