Some of you may have run across the wild conspiracy that the actor Matthew Perry of "Friends" fame died of baneberry poisoning. What looks to me to possibly be jujube fruit (not a positive ID), is ID'd by the news services as "appearing to be cranberies" (NOPE), and presented as baneberries/actaea fruit by conspiracists. Look at the video, please, and give me your opinions. Below the link I will paste what I've been posting every time I run across this in the news services. They have NO business promulgating this nonsense.

The video

My reply:

People who have no horticultural background have NO business "identifying" poisonous/non-poisonous plants. Those are NOT baneberries/actaea in Matthew's video. Actaea berries are about 1/10 the size of what he lays out on the table, less than 1/4 inch. They are also bright red, and glossy, and the red species' berries have distinctive "dimples". Baneberries are round/spherical, not remotely approaching oval, as in the video. There is also a variety with pure white berries. Not to mention that if those were baneberries, and he "had them for dinner", he most likely would have been suffering the effects by the time he recorded the vid. I can't ID what the fruits/berries ARE, but I can definitively say what they are NOT: baneberries.

They are possibly jujube fruit.

EDIT: the news services keep referring to the fruit as "appearing to be cranberries". NOPE. Cranberries are ALSO round, not oval, never as large as what Matthew showed, but still much too large to be confused with baneberries.