Walking through the ancient tropical rainforests of North Queensland is an invigorating experience but there are a few dangerous tropical rainforest plants that are definitely best avoided.
When people visit tropical rainforests or jungles they may be on the look out for creepy crawlies and snakes, but very few are aware that there are also some plants you should avoid coming into contact with.
Most visitors are unlikely to be affected by any of these plants but being forewarned is being forearmed!
Spiky Palm Tree
Some plants, like this spiky palm tree are best avoided for obvious reasons. You certainly wouldn’t want to walk into it or grab it for balance. Others are a little less obvious and it’s only when you come into contact with them that you understand how they came to get their Aboriginal name.
If you stick to the trails you should be okay but when you need to do some bush bashing to find a cache then keep an eye out for these plants.
Wait-A-While Vine
One of North Queensland’s most notorious and very common plants is the Wait-A-While Vine.
It hangs from the canopy of the rainforest with prickles on its thin stem. Initially it may look harmless. It’s only when you get tangled in it and try to walk away that you realise how it got it’s name.
Wait-a-while vines have hooked spines on them so if your skin or clothes get caught on it as you walk past it literally hooks onto you.
The best course of action is to stop walking, ‘wait-a-while’ and disentangle yourself. If you keep walking it will scratch your skin and rip your clothes.
Gympie Gympie Stinging Tree
This is the most dangerous tropical rainforest plant to be aware of in North Queensland.
It may look harmless, even attractive but it is definitely best avoided.
Aboriginal people call this plant ‘Gympie Gympie’, which means ‘devil-like’. It has large green leaves with serrated edges that are toxic. If your skin comes into contact with the leaves, fine silica-tipped hairs inject venom like mini-syringes.
It causes extreme pain with symptoms including an intense stinging sensation that can last for several weeks.
There's no shortage of horror stories about the Gympie Gympie. One ex-serviceman, Cyril Bromley, fell into one of the plants during WWII training exercises, and he ended up strapped to a hospital bed, "as mad as a cut snake." Bromley also told a story of an officer who unknowingly used a leaf as toilet paper. He ended up shooting himself. Botanist Ernie Rider was whacked in the face, arm, and chest in 1963, and it wasn't until 1965 that he was finally free of the pain.
If you're stung by the plant, you can't just pluck the needles out with tweezers. They're too fine and too dense — one of the best solutions is to rip them all out at once with hot wax, like the world's worst Brazilian. But be careful. If any of the hundreds of stingers stuck in your skin breaks off, you're in for years of pain. Researchers have even reported being stung by dried leaves stored away for a century.
The stinging tree can sometimes be found close to walking tracks so don’t just assume it’s only to be found in the middle of dense rainforest. It actually tends to grow in open areas, along roadsides for example, because it needs a lot of light to grow. It does less well under the thick canopy of trees in the forest.
You have been warned!
Congratulations to GC_Diver who didn't wait too long to claim the FTF.
