Banded Sea Snake – how to identify, avoid their habitat, and treatment for their bite.
Banded sea snake Laticauda colubrina Description: Smooth-scaled snake that is a pale shade of blue with black bands. Its oarlike tail provides propulsion in swimming. Characteristics: Most active at night, swimming close to shore and at times entering tide pools. Its venom is a very strong neurotoxin. Its victims are…
Saw Scaled Viper snake – how to identify, avoid their habitat, and treatment for their bite.
Saw-scaled viper Echis carinatus Description: Color is light buff with shades of brown, dull red, or gray. Its sides have a white or light-colored pattern. Its head usually has two dark stripes that start behind the eye and extend to the rear. Characteristics: A small but extremely dangerous viper. It…
Russell’s Viper snake – how to identify, avoid their habitat, and treatment for their bite.
Russell's viper Vipera russellii Description: Light brown body with three rows of dark brown or black splotches bordered with white or yellow extending its entire length. Characteristics: This dangerous species is abundant over its entire range. It is responsible for more human fatalities than any other venomous snake. It is…
Puff adder snake – how to identify, avoid their habitat, and treatment for their bite.
Puff adder Bitis arietans Description: Yellowish, light brown, or orange with chevron-shaped dark brown or black bars. Characteristics: The puff adder is the second largest of the dangerous vipers. It is one of the most common snakes in Africa. It is largely nocturnal, hunting at night and seeking shelter during…
Palestinian viper – how to identify, avoid their habitat, and treatment for their bite.
Palestinian viper Vipera palaestinae Description: Olive to rusty brown with a dark V-shaped mark on the head and a brown, zigzag band along the back. Characteristics: The Palestinian viper is closely related to the Russell's viper of Asia. Like its cousin, it is extremely dangerous. It is active and aggressive…
McMahon’s viper – how to identify, avoid their habitat, and treatment for their bite.
McMahon's viper Eristicophis macmahonii Description: Sandy buff color dominates the body, with darker brown spots on the side of the body. The nose shield is broad, aiding in burrowing. Characteristics: Very little is known about this species. It apparently is rare or seldom seen. This viper is very irritable; it…
Habu Pit Viper snake – how to identify, avoid their habitat, and treatment for their bite.
Habu Pit Viper Naja haje Description: Yellowish, dark brown, or black uniform top with brown cross-bands. Its head is sometimes black. Characteristics: It is extremely dangerous. It is responsible for many human deaths. Once aroused or threatened, it will attack and continue the attack until it feels an escape is…
Tick – the dangers of tick bites, how to avoid them, and how to treat
Description: Ticks are in the same family as spiders and hence share some characteristics with them ( like spiders, Ticks have eight legs). They are parasites living on the blood of other animals a practice which makes them vectors (carriers) of several diseases including Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted…
All about wasps and hornets – their habitat, sting, treatment, and how to avoid their bite.
Wasps and hornets Description: The Wasp, or Hornet (also known as Dirt Daubers, Mud Daubers, Potter Wasps, Velvet Ants, Yellowjackets, Fairyflies), is a rather generic suborder of insects. A Wasp generally a smooth-bodied, slender stinging insects. Like a Bee, Wasps have two pairs of wings, a stinger (only the female…
All about bees – their habitat, sting, and how to avoid being attacked
Bee Description: Bees are flying insects with brown or black, hairy, fuzz-covered bodies (the hair on their body is used to collect pollen). The bee’s body typically has 3 or 5 dark, black and yellow or orangish, colored hair bands around their body and lack the “thin” abdomen found in…
Oleander – how to identify this poisonous plant and diagnose/treat poisoning.
Oleander Nerium oleander Dogbane (Apocynaceae) Family Description: The poisonous Oleander shrub (or small tree) grows to about 9 meters (27 feet), with alternate, very straight, thick, leathery, dark green, long (2-8 inches), narrow (1 inch), lance-shaped leaves. Leaves typically grow in pairs or whorls of three. Mature plants have grayish…
Chinaberry – how to identify this poisonous plant and diagnose/treat poisoning.
Chinaberry Melia azedarach Mahogany (Meliaceae) Family Description: The poisonous Chinaberry tree (also known as bead-tree, Persian lilac, white cedar, Texas umbrella, pride of India, or Cape lilac) has a round, spreading crown and grows up to 14 meters (42 feet) tall. It has alternate, compound (odd-pinnate) leaves with toothed (serrated…
Castor bean, castor-oil plant, palma Christi – how to identify this poisonous plant and diagnose/treat poisoning.
Castor bean, castor-oil plant, palma Christi Ricinus communis Spurge (Euphorbiaceae) Family Description: The castor bean is a semi-woody, flowering plant with large, alternate, star-like leaves that grows as a tree in tropical regions and as an annual in temperate regions. Its glossy leaves grow to 15-45 centimeters (6-18 inches long…
Wild pistachio – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Wild pistachio (Pistacia species) Wild Pistachio plants can grow as shrubs or trees up to a height of 7 meters (23 feet). It branches are spreading and form a dense crown. The bark of the Wild Pistachio is typically ashen gray in color and deeply fissured often giving the tree…
Wild desert gourd or colocynth – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Wild desert gourd or colocynth (Citrullus colocynthis) The wild desert gourd (also known as Bitter Apple, Bitter Cucumber, Egusi, or Vine of Sodom), a member of the watermelon family, produces a to 3-meter-long (7 1/2- to 9-foot-long) ground-trailing vine with hairy, angular stems. The leaves are 3-7 lobed. The perfectly…
Wild caper – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Wild caper (Capparis aphylla) Wild Caper, also known as Kerda, Kair, Karir, Kirir, and Karril, is a small branched tree or thorny shrub that bears many thin, often tangled looking, leafless branches and grows to a height of about 15 feet. Leaves are usually only found on young shoots and…
Prickly pear cactus – Surprise! All parts of this plant are edible!
Prickly pear cactus (Opuntia species) The Prickly Pear (or Paddle) cactus has flat, padlike stems that are green. The Prickly Pear has two kinds of spines – hard, fixed spines and small, hairlike prickles that easily penetrate the skin and detach from the plant. The plants grow in dense, tangled…
Pine trees – pine provides a bounty of uses in survival situations
Pine (Pinus species) Pine trees are easily recognized by their needle-like leaves grouped in bundles. Each bundle may contain one to five needles, the number varying among species. They are a resinous tree growing up to 250 feet tall. The tree's odor and sticky sap provide a simple way to…
Persimmon – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana and other species) The common persimmon trees (also known as American Persimmon, Eastern Persimmon, Simmon, Possumwood, and Sugar Plum) is a small tree (30-60 feet) with a short, skinny trunk and a round shaped top. Its bark is dark brown or dark gray and divided into plates…
Orach (Saltbush) – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Orach (Atriplex species) The edible Orach plant (also known as Saltbush, Garden Orache, Red Orache, Mountain Spinach, or French Spinach) is vine-like in growth and can grow erect to 1-2 meters (3-6 feet) in height. It has arrowhead-shaped, somewhat oblong, alternate leaves up to 5 centimeters (2 inches) long. The…
Mango – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Mango (Mangifera indica) The Mango tree may reach 34-40 meters (115-130 feet) in height with a crown radius of 10 meters (33 feet). It has alternate, simple, shiny, dark green leaves. When the leaves are young they are orange-pink and change to dark, glossy red, then dark green as they…
Horseradish tree – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Horseradish or Drumstick tree (Moringa pterygosperma) The edible Horseradish tree (also known as the moringa, benzolive tree, West Indian ben and drumstick tree) grows from to 14 meters (15 to 46 feet) tall and is rather slender with drooping branches. Its leaves have a fernlike appearance. Its flowers and long,…
Fishtail palm – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Fishtail palm (Caryota urens) Fishtail palms are large trees, at least 18 meters (60 feet) tall. The trees have a solitary trunk growing to about 1 foot wide. Leaf scar rings can be found scattered along the gray trunk. Their leaves are unlike those of any other palm; the leaflets…
Date palm – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera) The date palm is a tall, unbranched tree with a crown of huge, compound leaves. It can grow singly or sometimes forming a clump with several stems from a single root system. The leaves are long with spines. Its fruit. called “dates”, is yellow when ripe.…
Jujube – edible wild plant – how to find, identify, prepare, and other uses for survival.
Common jujube (Ziziphus jujuba) The common jujube is either a deciduous tree growing to a height of 12 meters (40 feet) or a large shrub, depending upon where it grows and how much water is available for growth. Its branches are usually spiny with shiny-green, oval leaves with three veins…
