“He said, ‘Wow, this is jimson; that’s really poisonous,’ ” said Mary Anderson, a spokeswoman for the Montgomery Department of Health and Human Services. The plant had recently been cut, and investigators found leaf parts in the kitchen trash. The department received tests yesterday that confirmed the plant’s presence in the stew.

The belladonna alkaloids found in jimson can cause serious neurological effects and can be fatal in high doses. The plant, which has long been used, and misused, as a medicine and intoxicant, is readily found in farm fields, Anderson said. It is more unusual for the weed to crop up in a suburban garden.”