I've grown it but not for several years, think I do have some seed in my seed box though, I've never heard that it can kill though!! then again so can a lot of plants if you eat them.

I sent off for the Countryfile seeds a while ago and it seems ony the corncockle seeds have grown. I am not going to get bent out of shape with all this newspaper scaremongering. As said before, there are lots of dodgy plants around.

It smacks of the usual newspaper slant on sensational headlines using "killer, deadly, poisonous" etc.
It's a lovely plant and I accept that it can, in certain cases, bring on problems if it is eaten(!) and after touching, hands not being washed.

At the risk of seeming immodest, I wrote this http://thepoisongarden.co.uk/blog2/blog230714.php yesterday about this ridiculous story.

I use the strap line '...because every garden is a poison garden' because I've never seen a garden that doesn't contain plants that could be described the way the press is describing corncockle.

I have to assume it's a bad year for Datura stramonium, thorn apple.

The only way I can imagine corncockle killing someone is from the heart attack brought on by the shock of seeing it growing truly wild in the British Isles.

I'd like to say it must have been a quiet news day but it just seems to be fairly standard scaremongering from the tabloids.

They have probably been eaten by the plague of Spanish slugs which the press was on about last year.

I grow it and have done off and on for 20 yrs and I'm still standing!

I've grown it happily and I too am still here. Must confess i haven't actually eaten any though...and like so may poisonous plants they don't upset you if you don't eat them!

Ah, but according to the paper, you only have to look at the plant to die, horribly, in screaming agony, yelling, "Oh the cockles of my heart are bursting."

Lol Owdboggy, must be getting shortsighted then.
This is the first year for ages I haven't had any - must have spread mulch too thick last autumn.
Come to think of it they were a weed of cornfields so some of the seed must have got mixed in with the wheat before selective weedkillers - strange there were no mass extinctions isn't it?

Spoilsport! You've now ruined the paper's story.

Ah, but there were mass extinctions, well sort of. BUT the dying and mass hysteria and so on was put down to the fungus 'ergot' which infected the wheat and when ingested causes all sorts of problems including manic movements (St. Vitus's Dance) and hallucinations. Now we know this was wrong, it was Corncockle all along.

I don't understand why the seed is being sold in meadowflower mixtures. Doesn't it need the annual turn over of the soil, as it would get in cornfields? Also, since it has been a "cultivated" flower for quite a few years now rather than a genuine wildflower why hasn't the deadly poison been bred out by the people at T&M/Suttons etc.

I got mine free through Countryfile from, I believe Kew, or the Milennium seedbank.

Countryfile was an additional source for me, too - I also bought a wildflower mix from Wilko which contained Cornckle.

My first seeds came from a kind Goyer and after that it sowed itself until this year (And if any body has a few to spare this autumn I would be grateful!)

If I'm still alive, I'd be delighted to send you some! :-)