House Sparrow eating yams

[Jan]

Over a few days I've watched first a female and later 2 males going into a deep bucket to collect a NZ yam and peck at it on the ground. Never knew yams were appealing, did you? We have had to bring them indoors.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

I lost all mine to pheasants digging them up and eating them until I fenced them out.

[Jan]

They are supposed to contain oxalic acid which makes them toxic and that's why they need cooking. We never fed beet leaves to rabbits when I was a kid, for the same reason, but suspect that was misleading. Maybe birds aren't affected by oxalic acid.

[Neil Fitzgerald]

The dose makes the poison.

A few oca ("yam") leaves can be nice in a salad.

[Nick Allen]

'The dose makes the poison.'

From Paracelsus (1493-1540) the 'father of toxicology' and possibly the first pharmaceutical chemist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7920879/

[Jan]

That's facscinating stuff, Nick. Is that where bombastic comes from, nothing to do with toxicology of course?

[Nick Allen]

Bombastus was apparently part of his family name and not directly related to the current meaning of bombastic.