A innocuous-looking hedgerow in a c൩ity playground is actually what botanists call “the plant of death” — and it could have killed a 2-year-old girl.
Little Joy Ve🌄rnon spent seven hours in the emergency room at NYU/Langone Medical Center on Sept. 17 after popping a poisonous yew berry in her mouth while frolicking at Asse𒁏r Levy playground on East 23rd Street near the FDR Drive in Kips Bay.
She found the tempting bright-red berry in the𝐆 ཧwater fountain.
The flesh of the berry is safe, but the tiny seeds are potentially lethal. Had the 22-pound🌞 toddler consumed more🌟, experts told The Post, she could have been dead in an hour.
Joy’s parents are now demanding that the city dig up the decorative but deadly yew pla🌳nts at not only Asser Levy but at all the city parks and playgrounds that harbor them.
Advocates said the plant is common through♍out the city park system.
At Asser Levy, “these bushes are literally surrounding the playground,” said Joy’s mom, Natalie 🔜Gruppuso. “I want them removed, because toddlers are very likely to put things in their mouth that look enticing.”
Gruppuso’s husband, Ryan Vernon, was at the park witꦏh Joy at about 6 p.m. when the near-tragedy unf෴olded.
“My husband was watꦅching her — but not on top of her — because we didn’t w꧅ant to be helicopter parents,” the mother said.
When Vernon saw Joy standing at the water fountain and putting something in her mouth, he ran to her and found a “bunch” of red berries on top of the fountain drain. She said she swallꦚowed one.
Vernon did a Google image search of shrubs with red berries and realized Joy had eaten a yew berry, Gruppuso said. ꧒He texted his wife, who called the poison-control hot line.
She was told “the seeds are quite toxic and can le♔ad to cardiac arrest.”
“I ღcalled my husband back and said, ‘Stop everything you’re doi🅠ng!’ ”
Vernon rushed Joy to the NYU emergency room.
Over the course of seven hours, doctors took Joy’s temperature, heart rate and vitals🃏 — and determined she 🧸luckily was not poisoned, the mom said.
Biologist Frank Reiser of Nassau Community College, who successfully crusaded a decade ago to have yew shrubs removed from eight Nassau County parks and playgrounds, had this message for city officials: “Remove the plants as quickly as possible. This is the season where the berries are red and ripe. This is the season where there is the greatest risk.”
“It’s a plant where just five seeds can be lethal and it shows very little symptoms 🐈before the ꦐonset of toxicity, so you’re not warned,” he said. “There is no antidote.”
Gruppuso said she contact✅ed the Parks Department and received no response, 𝄹and that her complaint to 311 resulted in “no action taken.”
That prompted her to launch an online petition, which garnered 1✨26 signatures. She sent it to City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and Park🐈s Department official Pia Rivera.
After a Post inquiry Friday, an agency spokeswoman said the city’s 30,000 acres of parks contain “innum🎃erable uncatalogued species” and “nobody should eat anything growing in a park.”
“This is the first incident of its kind in memory,” the spokeswoman added. “We are taking the matte🌼r seriously and reviewing next best steps for addressing this species when found in playgrou🌟nds.”