Reaction

From: Kevin & Ali tautau at earthlink.net> on 1999.11.12 at 15:34:40(3826) Here's a new one, as far as I can tell... I LOVE Aroids and have been growing them for quite some time. Recently, I have discovered that I get a severe attack of dermatitis from the sap of Philodendron scandens. All I have to do is touch a broken leaf or stem and I get a raised bump like a nasty mosquito bite and it itches like %&*^! I know, poor me. Well, here's my question...P.scandens is the ONLY aroid, so far that does this to me. No Dieffenbachia, no Aglaonema, no Monstera, and I can practically eat Epipremnum. I know this because I self-inflicted test patches across my stomach to figure out who the culprit was! (Why the stomach? It seemed the only place left unscathed that was appropriate to scratch in public!) ;) Returning, does anyone know if P.scandens has an unusually high oxalic acid content? Does anyone know if P.scandens possesses any chemicals particular to its genus/tribe/sub-this or that? Does anyone else know that they have reactions to any specific aroids? Thanks! Any info anyone could scratch out would be interesting. Kevin +More tautau@earthlink.net

Note: this is a very old post, so no reply function is available.