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The story
An Asahi Shimbun feature showcased a scene in Kami Town, Miyagi Prefecture, where red spider lilies bloom in a single row stretching about 150 meters along a rice paddy levee. The bulbs of the red spider lily are poisonous, and some locals believe wild boars avoid digging them up because they dislike the toxin. On 5ch’s Science News+ board, posters discussed how the flower is also known as “manjushage” (its Buddhist-sutra name) and the “grave flower,” along with the history of eating the bulbs after removing the poison during the food shortages of the postwar era. Some reacted with amazement — “if it really works, the wisdom of our ancestors is incredible” — while others pushed back, saying “the lilies grow around my field too, and the damage hasn’t changed a bit,” leaving the actual effectiveness up for debate.
September 19, 2026, 10:00 AM
Kei Teshirogi
Along a rice paddy in Hakuji, Kami Town, Miyagi Prefecture, red spider lilies bloom in a single row stretching roughly 150 meters. Their deep red color stands out against a backdrop of bowing rice ears.
Source: asahi.com / Original article here
What people said
I went to shoot photos of them at Shiroyama Park in Motegi, Tochigi Prefecture the other day, and sure enough, that's exactly how it was.
Maybe it's the smell?
Why not extract the active compound and spray it around instead
Deregulate it, use AI to develop poison bait that works exclusively on pest species, and completely wipe out things like muntjac deer, raccoons, and masked palm civets — animals that shouldn't even be in Japan — down to zero with dedicated poison.
That kind of species-specific targeting isn't realistic.
It might be possible if the gap were as big as mammals versus birds or reptiles (and even that would be pretty tough, mind you).
Generally speaking, mammals aren't all that different from each other at that level — that's exactly why pig organs can be used in humans.
Bacteria or viruses can sometimes be species-selective, but a drug that works on wild boars and deer while being completely harmless to every other mammal? Basically impossible.
Wild boars would probably just eat it, poison and all.
And then die from it.
Well, they wouldn't dig up the spots where the lilies are planted, lol. If there's no lily there and some other crop is planted instead, they'll dig that up, right?
The reason they're seen all over the place despite being toxic (toxic enough to cause fatal accidents) is partly because they also served as a last-resort emergency food.
Background and Discussion Points
The red spider lily (manjushage) contains toxic alkaloids such as lycorine, and because moles and rats are said to dislike its bulbs, it has long been planted along paddy paths and at the borders of graveyards. There are records of people detoxifying and eating the bulbs as emergency food during the postwar food shortages, and the nickname “grave flower” mentioned in the comments also stems from this toxicity. That said, the article’s claim of “zero digging damage” is based on observations at one particular paddy field, and it’s worth noting that the spots where the lilies grow may simply have had nothing worth digging up in the first place — so correlation shouldn’t be mistaken for a genuine repellent effect. The thread also drifted into a proposal to use AI to develop poison bait that would target only specific invasive species, but posters pointed out that since mammals are physiologically quite similar to one another, developing a drug that selectively affects only certain species is unrealistic in practice — highlighting the gap between the simple idea and biological constraints.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Science News+) thread “Red Spider Lilies as Wild Boar Deterrent? Bulb Toxins as Repellent? Digging Damage Down to Zero.”
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