Describe a Poisonous Plant in Your Country Cue Card

Oct 22, 2022

Describe a Poisonous Plant in Your Country Cue Card is an IELTS Speaking Part 2 topic. There are three model answers given below. The model answers are framed based on three key points -What is the name of the plant, Where is it found, and How do you know about it.

What is a Cue Card: IELTS Speaking Part 2 includes cue cards containing topics on which candidates are to speak. Candidates get 2-3 minutes to speak and 1 minute for note-taking. In IELTS Speaking part 2, candidates' proficiency in grammar and vocabulary is assessed along with their confidence to speak in English.

Check: Get 10 Free IELTS Sample Papers
Check: Register for IELTS Coaching - Join for Free Trial Class Now

Topic: Describe a Poisonous Plant in your CountryCue Card

You should say

What is the name of the plant?
Where is it found?
How do you know about it?

Model Answer 1

What is the name of the plant?

White snakeroot, is a severely poisonous North American plant. It is also known as also White Sanicle or Tall Boneset. The blossoms look white, and when they bloom, small fluffy seeds are blown away by the wind. This plant contains a high concentration of the toxin tremetol, which is known to harm humans indirectly rather than directly. When cattle eat the plant, the poison is absorbed into their milk and meat. When people eat beef or drink milk, the poison enters the body. This poison produces milk sickness, which is highly lethal for humans. Thousands of inexperienced European settlers died in America from milk sickness in the early nineteenth century. Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln's mother, is thought to have died from milk fever.

Where is it found?

Snakeroot poisoning is a sickness caused by tramadol, a deadly alcohol found in the North American plant white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima). Ageratina altissima, often called a white snakeroot, richweed, or white sanicle is a poisonous herbaceous plant in the Asteraceae family endemic to eastern and central North America. This plant is around 3 feet. Snakeroot mostly grows in moist, shady areas. It is generally seen along roadsides, woods, fields, thickets, and under powerline clearances.

How do you know about it?

This plant is also widely used in India for medicinal purposes. Traditional Ayurvedic medicine has employed the Indian snakeroot, primarily for high blood pressure and mental diseases such as schizophrenia and anxiety. In addition, one of the compounds in Indian snakeroot is the same as reserpine, a prescription medicine. Reserpine has been used to treat excessive blood pressure, schizophrenia, and certain circulatory symptoms.

Model Answer 2

What is the name of the plant?

The Strychnine tree, named as poison nut or Quaker Button (sometimes Nux vomica), is a medium-sized tree indigenous to India and Southeast Asia. The little seeds within the trees' green to orange fruit are highly deadly, including the dangerous alkaloids Strychnine and Brucine. 30 mg of these poisons is enough to kill an adult, resulting in a painful death from intense convulsions caused by simultaneous stimulation of sensory ganglia in the spine.

Where is it found?

Strychnos nux-vomica is the principal natural source of strychnine. The nux vomica tree (Strychnos nux-vomica) is a tropical Loganiaceae species. Strychnos nux-vomica is mainly found in Southeast Asia. The cultivation range of nux vomica includes Sri Lanka, India, southern China, and northern Australia. The nux vomica can reach a height of 49.2 feet (15 m). This basically crystalline powder that is white and odorless.

How do you know about it?

These plants are used in medicines. Despite serious safety risks, nux vomica is used to treat digestive disorders, heart and circulatory system disorders, eye diseases, and lung disease. It is also utilized to treat neurological diseases, depression, migraine headaches, menopausal symptoms, and Raynaud's illness, a blood vessel disorder. Other applications include treating "tired blood" (anemia), acting as a tonic, and stimulating hunger. Nux vomica is used by men to treat erectile dysfunction (ED, impotence). Nux vomica is used as rat poison in the production process. This is due to the presence of strychnine and brucine, two lethal compounds. Nux vomica is extremely dangerous. Taking nux vomica for any more than a week, especially in doses of 30 mg or higher, can result in serious side effects. Restlessness, anxiety, disorientation, neck and back stiffness, twitches in jaw and neck muscles, convulsions, seizures, respiratory issues, liver failure, and death are some of the negative effects.

Model Answer 3

What is the name of the plant?

Cerebera Odollam, often called a suicidal tree or pom pom, is well-known for its role in suicide and murder. Cerbera odollam is an Apocynaceae family plant species. It is often referred to as the "suicide tree" due to its powerful cardiotoxic effects, which make it an appropriate means of suicide. Pong-Pong and Othalanga are common names for this plant, which grows in moist places in South India, Madagascar, and Southeast Asia.

Where is it found?

It is a flora native to India and other regions of southern Asia, mainly growing in coastal salt swamps and marshy places, although it is often used as a hedge plant between residential complexes. Cerbera odollam looks a lot like oleander, another potentially deadly plant in the same family. It has whorled branchlets around the trunk and terminally-packed leaves with tapering bases, acuminate apices, and whole edges. The plant produces a creamy, white latex. When still green, its fruit resembles a miniature mango, with a green fibrous shell enclosing an oval kernel and two cross-matching white fleshy halves. When the white kernel is exposed to air, it turns violet, then dark gray, and finally brown or black.

How do you know about it?

The suicidal tree is quite famous. The fruits are used in the production of bioinsecticides and deodorants. The seeds were utilized as a fish poison in a tiny creek in the Philippines (Cerbera odollam, RMBR). There has been research on the viability of turning the seeds into biodiesel. The seeds contain non-selective oil, which produces a gleaming flame with a pleasant nut-like aroma. Burmese people use it for lighting, cosmetics, and insecticides or repellents when combined with other oils. The fruits are employed in the production of bio-insecticides and deodorants, as well as as a treatment for hydrophobia. Surprisingly, the variety found in Bangladesh's coastal region is not particularly dangerous, and locals eat the fleshy portion of the fruit.

Check- IELTS Speaking Samples