This bush is outside our garage door: it's very beautiful, and very golden, but I wish that it didn't make me sneeze so much ... Ericameria nauseosa, also known as rubber rabbit brush - as far back as 1904, people were making rubber - or trying to make rubber - from it - and indeed are still doing so today, because apparently it can be used as a form of rubber for people who have a latex allergy.
Rather more worrying are a number of bushes in Bayo Canyon up by Los Alamos, which contain 300,000 times more strontium-90 than a normal plant, because their roots reach down into nuclear waste, mistaking strontium for calcium. How do you tell which plants are safe, and which aren't? Use a geiger counter. Sometimes I wish that checking out things didn't promise to give me nightmares as well as allergies.
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