Brothers suffered golf ball-sized blisters that will scar them for life after they touched a plant dubbed Britain’s most dangerous.
Daniel, 21, brushed giant hogweed when he was retrieving a football from a bush in Boston Manor Park, Brentford.
Thinking he’d been stung by a nettle, he rubbed his ankle with a dock leaf and continued to enjoy the summer sunshine.
His eight-year-old brother Stanley also touched the plant, leaving them both with large painful blisters the size of golf balls and Daniel barely able to walk.
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 it got a little bit better.
“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.
“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 giant hogweed’s sap stops the skin protecting itself against the sun’s rays, leading to gruesome burns when exposed to natural light.
Part of what makes it so dangerous is that it usually causes no immediate pain, so its victims can continue to burn in the sunshine heedless of any problem.
It only takes a moment of exposure for the sap to do its work.
He ended up being sent home from work early, and needed two further days off to recuperate.
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 mum, Jenny, said the reaction was less severe for younger son Stanley, adding: “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.”
Daniel, however, will forever be marked by the encounter.
He added: “It’s going to be on me for the rest of my life.
“To be honest, I don’t even know when I can uncover my ankle – I’m scared to have it out in the sun, because I don’t want that to happen again.
“I can’t let no sun through otherwise I end up with third-degree burns, and that’s what it basically was – that’s what’s happened to me.
“I’m 21 years old, and I’m alright if something like that happens to my ankle.
“But if a five-year-old tried to get a ball and fell into that bush, and fell face first, they’d get life-changing injuries.”
Now the family is calling for parks to put up warning signs about the dangers of giant hogweed.
Jenny said: “If I would have known that there was anything like that in that park, if there was any warning signs, I would not have let the kids go anywhere near the bush.
“I think that’s what Daniel is most fuming about: if he would have known the dangers, then it could have been completely avoided and he wouldn’t be scarred for life.
“It took literally seconds.
The giant hogweed is native to the Caucasus, but was introduced to Britain as an ornamental plant in 1817, and its spread is now out of control.
