WITH Halloween rapidly approaching it could be right time to look at the spikiest, scariest, foulest smelling plants found in garden.

While would-be wizards and witches may be taunting you on your doorstep, in your garden you may experience something equally sinister.

Some plants can sting, burn, cut you or emit an acrid, foul-smelling odour.

Among the most prickly of plants is the hawthorn. As a thorny hedge, it will deter even the most persistent house- breaker, as the thorns of mature plants can pierce the toughest glove.

Other prickly candidates include creeping juniper, common holly, firethorn (pyracantha), juniper and purple berberis.

Then there are the plants which don't smell quite as sweet as you'd like.

Take the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) and the dragon arum (Dracunculus vulgaris). Both smell like rotting corpses when in flower, to attract pollinating flies.

Then there's stinking iris, Iris foetidissima, whose leaves have a pungent scent, but which comes into its own visually in autumn and winter, putting on a spectacular display when its huge seed pods burst open to reveal brilliant orange, sometimes red, seeds.

They cling to the pods throughout the winter until the spring, and are ignored by birds.

Others in the bad smells league include Eucomis bicolor, the pineapple lily, and the dead horse arum (Helicodiceros muscivorus), named for obvious reasons.

While many bulbs bring heady fragrance to spring, including the sweetly scented hyacinth, others have pretty horrible odours including the imposing crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis).

But don't let the smell put you off, because its impressive orange flowers make more of a statement than its whiffy pong.

No Halloween would be complete without its share of witches, whose potions have been linked with some of our most common plants.

Hemlock, for instance, is highly poisonous, but it doesn't look significantly different from the hedge parsley or cow parsley which grows along roads, ditches, trails, or the edges of fields.

Its white flowerheads resemble those of parsnips, carrots or angelica, while the bright green leaves are even feathery and delicate.

Yet all plant parts are poisonous, with the seeds containing the highest concentration of poison, causing toxic reactions.