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Plants, pets and children

38 common house and garden plants with a toxicity verdict for cats, dogs and small children, the care they need, and the poison-centre number for each country in the region.

This is a reference table, not a diagnosis and not veterinary or medical advice. It cannot tell you how much of a plant matters for a particular child or a particular animal — that depends on body weight, on the part eaten and on how long ago. If a person or an animal has eaten part of a plant, phone the poison information centre or a clinician; do not wait for symptoms, and do not make anyone vomit unless you are told to.

If it has already happened

The order of operations is the same for a child and for an animal. Take whatever is left of the plant out of the mouth and keep it — a leaf in a bag or a photograph is worth more to the person on the phone than any description. Rinse the mouth with cool water and, for a mouth-burning plant, offer something cold: milk, yoghurt or ice cream binds oxalate crystals and soothes. Wash sap off skin with soap and water, and irrigate an eye for a full fifteen minutes.

Then phone. Do not induce vomiting unless the poison centre or the vet tells you to — with a caustic sap it does the damage twice. Do not give charcoal, salt water or anything else off the internet. And do not wait for symptoms with the plants marked as an emergency risk below: lilies in cats, sago palm, yew, monkshood, oleander and autumn crocus all have a deceptive quiet period, and the treatment window closes during it.

Anywhere in the European Union, 112 reaches emergency services and can put you through. Lithuania's poison information bureau (Apsinuodijimų kontrolės ir informacijos biuras) publishes its own round-the-clock line; if you do not have it to hand, use 112. For an animal, your own veterinary clinic or its out-of-hours service is the first call — human poison centres do not advise on animals in every country.

Every plant in the table

Sorted worst first. In the three audience columns, "severe" means the plant can cause organ failure or death in that audience and the phone call is not optional; "toxic" means it will make them properly ill; "irritant" means painful but self-limiting; "not flagged" means the veterinary services do not list it as a poison. The risk column is simply the worst of the three.

How a plant actually does harm

Nearly every household plant poisoning in this region belongs to one of a handful of mechanisms, and they are not equally serious. Knowing which one you are dealing with tells you how urgent the situation is, far better than the plant's reputation does. Each species page links back to the others that work the same way.

Calcium oxalate needles

Cells in the leaf fire microscopic needles of insoluble calcium oxalate into whatever bites them. The pain is instant, which is why these cases are usually mild — the animal stops. The exception is swelling: in a small mouth it can threaten the airway. This is the whole arum family, and it is most of the house plants people own.

Alocasia · Anthurium · Dumb cane · Monstera · Peace lily · Philodendron · Pothos · ZZ plant

Cardiac glycosides

Compounds that act on the heart in the same way the drug digoxin does, with no dose control. They produce gut upset first and a rhythm disturbance later, so an animal that looks better after an hour is not necessarily out of it. Every plant in this group is a phone call.

Foxglove · Lily of the valley · Oleander · Kalanchoe

Alkaloids and other systemic poisons

The rest of the serious ones: colchicine, aconitine, taxine, lycorine, cycasin, ricin, the tropane alkaloids, grayanotoxins, and whatever it is in lilies that kills feline kidney cells. They share no chemistry, only a destination — unlike the mouth-irritants, these are absorbed and go on to act on the kidney, the liver, the nervous system or the heart. Several of them also leave a quiet interval between the exposure and the damage, which is exactly why waiting to see is the wrong move.

Autumn crocus · Castor bean · Deadly nightshade and bittersweet · Monkshood · Sago palm · True lily and daylily · Yew · Amaryllis · Daffodil · Rhododendron and azalea · Tulip

Saponins

Soap-like compounds that irritate the lining of the gut. Vomiting and diarrhoea, unpleasant rather than dangerous in most household exposures, with dehydration the thing to watch in a small animal.

Aloe vera · Cyclamen · Dracaena · English ivy · Snake plant

Caustic and irritant latex

The milky sap of the spurge family and the figs. It burns skin and mouth on contact, and in an eye it is a same-day ophthalmic problem. The seriousness varies enormously within the group — poinsettia is at the harmless end and pencil cactus at the other.

Pencil cactus and crown of thorns · Poinsettia · Weeping fig and rubber plant

Phototoxic sap

Sap that is inert in the dark and destructive in sunlight. There are no symptoms at the time; the burn arrives the next day. Washing and covering the skin immediately is what prevents it.

Giant hogweed

Plants the veterinary lists do not flag

If the question is what to buy rather than what to worry about, start here. These are ordinary garden-centre plants, not specialist ones, and between them they cover a dark corner, a bright sill, a bathroom and a Christmas table.

Where the verdicts come from

Each species page names the list its verdict follows. The pet verdicts paraphrase the ASPCA Animal Poison Control toxic and non-toxic plant lists, with the Pet Poison Helpline and International Cat Care used for the lily question, which is a cat-specific piece of clinical knowledge rather than a list entry. The garden species follow the Royal Horticultural Society's guidance on potentially harmful plants. Care information is standard horticultural practice for a cool-temperate northern climate: short winter days, dry heated indoor air and a genuine cold season outdoors.

What is deliberately absent is a dose. No page here tells you how many leaves matter, because that answer depends on the animal's weight, the part eaten and the time elapsed, and getting it wrong in either direction is harmful. That is the poison centre's job, and they take the call.

Sources: ASPCA Animal Poison Control — toxic and non-toxic plants · Royal Horticultural Society — potentially harmful garden plants · International Cat Care — plants poisonous to cats · Pet Poison Helpline · national poison information centres listed above · checked 2026-09-06

Related on this site

• Pet food safety — human foods fed to a cat or a dog, from chocolate and grapes to xylitol. That surface is food; this one is plants.
• Sowing calendar — the edible side of the garden and when to sow it in this climate.
• Herb and spice reference — the plants you take deliberately, with their interactions.

Frequently asked questions