A young man fears he may be scarred for life after being stung by giant hogweed in a London park.
Daniel, 21, accidentally brushed the plant while playing football in Boston Manor Park, Brentford, with his eight-year-old brother Stanley.
He said: ‘I jumped into the bush, got the football out, and stung my ankles. I thought it was stinging nettles.
‘My nan got me a dock leaf to rub on it, and I rubbed it on, and it got a little bit better.
‘So the next two days I’ve chilled and gone to work like normal thinking nothing of it, because I thought it was a stinging nettle rash.
‘Then two days later it just came up in massive blisters and it was so painful that, at one point, I couldn’t even walk.
‘I got out of bed in the morning for work and I collapsed under my own weight.’
The danger of giant hogweed is that it causes no immediate pain, so victims often continue to burn in the sunshine after being stung.
Daniel said his blisters grew to the size of ‘golf balls’ and he was in ‘unbearable’ pain. He ended up calling in sick to work for two days.
He said: ‘For two days after I got stung by the plant, I was working with my ankles out in the sun because it was really hot, and that’s why they’ve blistered up so bad.’
His little brother Stanley was also stung, although not so severely.
Mum Jenny added: ‘My other son who got hurt, he’d had a leaf in his hand.
‘Obviously we’d got the dock leaves so he just picked a leaf too – and unfortunately it was this hogweed leaf.
‘He had three very small blisters, they were like burn lines on his hands. He’s scarred as well and I’m hoping that it’s not a lifelong scar.’
