Friday 18 September 2015

The Gimpy Gimpy (Gympie Gympie) Plant


I was looking up something when came upon a comment (unrelated to the subject of the video) by Jay Lennah under a Youtube video by Weird Fruit Explorer~

"Schisandra berry.  Five flavour fruit may be an interesting one for you to try if you have not already.  Just make sure you never eat the gimpy gimpy plant berry ever.  It's hard to believe that something that horrible exists by nature.".
Gimpy Gimpy plant berry?  Haven't heard of it before. Is that a made up name? Maybe this person was just being cute. Googled it. Viola.

It's the funniest article on an "oh-my-god" plant I have ever read about.

The:

"If You Touch This Plant It Will Make You Vomit In Pure Agony" plant.

That's why I never step into rainforests or any forest. The only time I was forced to, was a forest in Thailand when I had no choice because if I didn't go, I wouldn't be able to graduate. Couldn't wait to get outta there fast.

the British Army had people send them samples of the stinging tree for use as a chemical weapon. Nothing has been heard since then. (We assume everyone who was even casually involved with the project died and they had to dynamite the facility.)
Hahaha.

The plant itself looks very harmless in the photo. But you can't even get near it.  The air around it is dangerous. Imagine an invisible dome of hovering, moving spines surrounding it. Wow. That's one scary plant.

And after getting the fruit, it's not even nice.

The most interesting part is the end where it says 2 trees were found with seemingly everything intact but without toxin. Hmm. Why? Random mutant variants that sometimes happens? In these plants, the toxin gene has been turned off.


Goes to show, never know what you will find on the Internet. 

Despite this, I'm still unable to find what I'm looking for & won't be able to. If only I could just go to the Himalayas to collect myself.



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