Clueless star Alicia Silverstone has confirmed that she is "alive and well" after posting an Instagram video of her consuming a mildly toxic plant from somebody's yard while on vacation in England.
"Don't worry... I didn't swallow," Silverstone wrote in a follow-up post to the initial video, wherein she asked followers for their help identifying the snack that saw her succumb to those hardwired gatherer instincts. She plucked an orange-ish plant from a stranger's garden and decided that, since it looked kind of like a tomato, she should take a bite.
Internet personality, forager and cook Alexis Nelson — a.k.a. Black Forager — identified the plant as likely to be a pseudocapsicum, which means "fake pepper," meaning Silverstone had good instincts when she noted that it tasted a bit like pepper. (That point is admittedly pretty moot when she's eating unidentified plants growing on random people's properties.) The plant is more widely known as a "winter cherry" or "Jerusalem cherry" and, yes, it is somewhat poisonous.
Nelson pointed out that the actor was never in any real danger, though. "If she ate like seven of them, maybe she had a tummy ache," Black Forager explained in her response to Silverstone's video. "Maybe she got… the poops. But otherwise, homegirl's fine."
In addition to being bewildered by Silverstone eating a fruit she didn't recognize out of a garden that she stumbled across while on vacation, Nelson said she was baffled by the online commenters spewing misinformation, telling the actor that she had eaten a legitimately dangerous form of nightshade. Ugh, as if!