REGARDING the laburnum tree in Hedge End (Daily Echo, May 5), anyone who has access to the Internet will discover that there are dozens of highly poisonous common plants that grow in our parks and gardens, some more poisonous than laburnum.

Therefore it is not clear to me why laburnum trees in particular are singled out for destruction.

There seems to be an hysterical attitude to laburnum. “Forrester” (1979, Lancet, page 1073) wrote that there were no reported deaths of children caused by laburnum in the past 100 years.

RICHARD EVANS, Woolston, Southampton.