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Dried Ficus leaves

3K views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  fishingguy12345 
#1 ·
I have a ficus tree that used to be in my chameleons cage but then I found out about the sap which could possibly poison him and I removed it. Now I have nothing to do with the Ficus (we dont keep plants inside except for in habitats).

I was thinking about potentially reusing its DRIED leaves for my vivarium build that I'm currently working on.

Could dried Ficus leaves hurt poison dart frogs? I would be drying then baking them in the oven for 30 minutes at 250.

Thought?

TIA

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#4 · (Edited)
There are some past threads where people report using Ficus benjamina in vivs (I assume that's the species we're talking about here). Many, many folks use F. pumila (which is also officially "toxic" (https://www.cfsanappsexternal.fda.gov/scripts/plantox/detail.cfm?id=8352)).

I do know that some reptiles (green iguanas, notably) love to eat F. benjamina.

People get dermatitis from the sap of some species of Ficus (and many other genera):

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0536.1998.tb05888.x

I get mild dermatitis from contact with so many plants on our property that I don't even think about it anymore.

Apparently, it isn't possible to kill mice by feeding them extracts from at least one species of Ficus:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378874109001408

Edit: the injected LD50 of 'ficus leaf extract' for mice in that study is about 500mg/kg (about the same as for Tylenol, to give some point of reference).

I didn't find any studies on frogs, but it looks to me as if all those 'ficus are toxic' hits (mostly about dogs) are clickbait. I'm no toxicologist, though, so eat random plants at your own risk. :)
 
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