☠️ Sea squill

🔍 Identify it without mistakes

A large, spectacular bulbous plant with a bulb that can reach 20 cm in diameter, half-buried and visible at the surface, covered with reddish-brown tunics. Wide basal leaves forming a rosette that appear after flowering. A long, leafless flower stalk 0.5 to 1.5 m tall bearing an impressive, dense spike of small starry white flowers in late summer, on seemingly dry and bare soil.

1. Huge reddish-brown bulb exposed at soil level
2. Naked flower stalk appearing WITHOUT leaves (leaves only come after flowering)
3. Dense spike of white starry flowers, highly visible from a distance
4. Characteristic presence near the sea on dry, stony soils

💊 Healing with it

Historically used as a powerful cardiotonic and diuretic (proscillaridin, a cardiac glycoside similar to digitalis); medical use has been abandoned in favor of safer, better-controlled molecules

Level of evidence : traditional use — Toxiplante — Urginea maritima monograph; INCHEM PIM 479

⚠️ NO self-medication: the entire plant, especially the bulb, is toxic and causes cardiac arrhythmia that can lead to cardiac arrest, preceded by digestive and neurosensory disorders; handling the fresh bulb alone causes skin irritation (calcium oxalate raphides)

🪓 Other bushcraft uses

• Dried and crushed bulb traditionally used as a natural rat poison (especially the red squill variant), as rodents are more sensitive to it than other mammals