Mom Warns About 'Suicide Tree' Seeds After Child's Death

By Gillian Mohney

Mar 3, 2016, 3:18 PM ET

PHOTO: An Illinois woman wants to draw attention to seeds from an Indian tree called Cerbera odollam.Tau?olunga/Wikimedia/

An Illinois woman wants to draw attention to seeds from an Indian tree called Cerbera odollam.

An Illinois woman is drawing attention to the dangers of a seed available online after she said her 22-year-old transgendered child died after ingesting the seeds.

Natosha Anderson told ABC's Chicago station WLS-TV that she wanted to show the dangers of "pong pong" seeds, which come from a tree called Cerbera odollam, originally native to India. Anderson said her child died two weeks ago after taking the seeds in an apparent suicide and that she found her in pain on the bathroom floor.

While Anderson used male pronouns and the name Bernard McCalip, she told WLS-TV her child had been struggling with her transgender identity and had recently changed her name to Lucia.

"He said, 'I can't feel my heart.' And I said, 'What's wrong? What's going on?'" Anderson, of Calumet City, told WLS-TV, recalling that she said, "I took a pong seed."

"And I said, 'A what? What is that?'" Anderson recalled, noting that paramedics did not recognize the seed or understand how it affects the body.

"I'm pretty sure he thought it was going to be easy, but it wasn't. He died in pain. It was slow, and it was painful," Anderson told WLS-TV of her suicide.

The office of the Lake County Medical Examiner said that McCalip's cause of death is still pending and that results from the toxicology tests were not yet available.

Anderson did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for additional comment.

Dr. Donna Seger, executive director and medical director of Tennessee Poison Control, said cases of this seed being ingested are still rare in the U.S. Seger said the seeds have an effect similar to a heart drug called digoxin.

"These seeds act just like this heart drug -- it causes arrhythmias [erratic heart beat] and cardiac damage," she said, noting that if a person ingests the seed, it may be possible to save the person if they get to a hospital in time. "Potentially, you try to give an antidote."

The seed contains a toxin that affects the heart, which can disrupt the heart's electrical activity, according to medical literature. The plant is often grown as a hedge between properties.

One medical report said the seed has been used multiple times in suicides and homicides in India, with 537 reported poisonings in the Indian state of Kerala over 11 years.

Anderson said she wanted to raise awareness of the seed's dangers so that other parents can protect their children and be aware that this seed is dangerous.

Seger said the case highlights how easy it can be to obtain dangerous products on the Internet.

"I think we are well aware that what you get on the Internet, you don't know what it is," she said. "The misconception is the FDA regulates everything that's not safe."

FDA does not regulate herbs or supplements, she noted.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/illinois-mom-warns-seeds-suicide-tree-22-year/story?id=Wikimedia/

http://naturespoisons.com/2015/03/18/cerberin-the-heartbreaker-of-the-suicide-tree-cerbera-odollam/

Suicide tree, murder tree, rape tree, rampant dutch elm mental health disease I think we need to expand the background check system for tree planting to include psychological evaluations, and to close the Home Depot Garden Center loopholes, you know anyone can go in and buy a tree no questions asked, in some places straw buying is ramnpant.

Condolences to the family.
Parents shouldn't have to bury their kids.


Many, many seeds contain potentially lethal toxins.
Some, such as apple seeds, each contain a minute amount
of cyanide. The amount contained per apple seed, is so small,
that a person could probably eat an apple, seeds and all,
without ill effect.

It would take ingesting a large amount to cause a lethal incident.
(I will not specify the amount.)

Cyanide can be synthesized from apple seeds.
The very deadly poison 'ricin', was first synthesized from
apple seeds.

I referenced apple seeds, solely because apples are in the
human food chain.



Again, condolences to the family.

Ricin actually comes from the Castor-Bean!
The Ricinus-Shrub!

Ricinus
Ricinus communis, the castorbean or castor-oil-plant, is a species of flowering plant in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. It is the sole species in the monotypic genus, Ricinus, and subtribe, Ricininae. Wikipedia
Scientific name: Ricinus communis

Quite poisonous
Grew wild all over the place where I lived in the West-Indies.
<<<<
Apple belongs into the Rosacea/Malus-Family!

The apple tree is a deciduous tree in the rose family best known for its sweet, pomaceous fruit, the apple. It is cultivated worldwide as a fruit tree, and is the most widely grown species in the genus Malus. Wikipedia

nasty Stuff indeed!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerbera_odollam

Cerbera odollam is a dicotyledonous angiosperm, a plant species in the Family Apocynaceae and commonly known as the suicide tree, pong-pong, and othalanga. It is a species native to India and other parts of southern Asia, growing preferentially in coastal salt swamps and in marshy areas but also grown as a hedge plant between home compounds. It yields a potent poison that has been used for suicide and murder.

Cerbera odollam bears a close resemblance to oleander, another highly toxic plant from the same family. Its branchlets are whorled about the trunk, and its leaves are terminally crowded, with tapering bases, acuminate apices, and entire margins. The plant as a whole yields a milky, white latex.

Its fruit, when still green, looks like a small mango, with a green fibrous shell enclosing an ovoid kernel measuring approximately 2 cm × 1.5 cm and consisting of two cross-matching white fleshy halves. On exposure to air, the white kernel turns violet, then dark grey, and ultimately brown, or black.

The kernels of C. odollam contain cerberin, a digoxin-type cardenolide and cardiac glycoside toxin that blocks the calcium ion channels in heart muscle, causing disruption of the heart beat, most often fatally.[citation needed] The difficulty in detecting cerberin in autopsies and the ability of strong spices to mask its taste makes it an agent of homicide and suicide in India; there were more than 500 cases of fatal Cerbera poisoning between 1989 and 1999 in the southwest Indian state of Kerala alone.[1][2]

That'll learn me to believe anything I see on PBS.