One is ill-advised to eat any wild thing without knowing for sure that it is not poisonous. This is especially true for brightly colored berries and mushrooms.
Among the poisonous berries in our area are those of Actaea rubra and Actaea pachypoda, or red and white baneberry. The latter is also known as dolls’ eyes because, as one late 19th century botanist vividly explained, they resemble “the china eyes that small children occasionally manage to gouge from their dolls’ heads.”
The specimen shown here is A. rubra, which generally produces red berries with a seed count higher than those of A. pachypoda. Both A. rubra and A. pachypoda are native to Illinois, although they are not very common (see map).
A related plant in Europe, Actaea spicata, has black berries long known for their occasional lethal effect on humans and animals. It’s from this deadly property that the name “baneberry” arose “bane” being an Old English word for that which can cause death.
The American species, by association with this European one, immediately acquired a reputation for being toxic. But this property has never been conclusively demonstrated by physiologists. To my satisfaction, however, an experiment conducted by the Vermont gardener, Alice Bacon, on herself in 1903 leaves little doubt on this issue. After ingesting some berries (the exact quantity was not specified) Bacon thankfully lived to provide the following account:
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“At first there was a most extraordinary pyrotechnic display of blue objects of all sizes and tints, circular with irregular edges; as one became interested in the spots a heavy weight was lowered on the top of the head and remained there, while sharp pains shot through the temples.
“Then suddenly the mind became confused and there was a total disability to recollect anything distinctly or arrange ideas with any coherency. On an attempt to talk, wrong names were given to objects, and although at the same time the mind knew mistakes were made in speech, the words seemed to utter themselves independently.
“For a few minutes there was great dizziness, the body seeming to swing off into space, while the blue spots changed to dancing sparks of fire. The lips and throat became parched and the latter somewhat constricted; swallowing was rather difficult; there was intense burning in the stomach with gaseous eructations, followed by sharp colicky pains in the abdomen and also pain across the back over the kidneys. The pulse rose to 125, was irregular, wiry, tense; the heart fluttered most unpleasantly.
“These symptoms lasted about an hour and were followed by a feeling of great weariness, but in three hours from the time of taking the dose all seemed to be again normal. The experiment was carried no further, as the effects in heart and brain were danger signals not to be ignored.” [ Bacon, A. E. 1903. An experiment with the fruit of red baneberry. Rhodora [–] Journal of the New England Botanical Club. 5(51): 77-79.]