I had to look up "eating milkweed pods". It looked to me like the milkweed that was being picked by that forager was the "Showy Milkweed" which is less poisonous to stock than some of the others. Most of what we have on the Ranch is California Narrow Leaf milkweed and Twin Leaf milkweed, both of which are very poisonous. I the same milkweed family we have Dogbane, which has "cardiac glycosides" which increase heart rate and will kill animals within 6 to 12 hours of ingestion. All of which makes me pretty hesitant to think of eating anything from that family!
Of course tomatoes were introduced to England strictly as an ornamental because they were in the nightshade family. No one in England ate tomatoes for almost a hundred years after introduction from the Americas on the basis that they must be poison. Dahlias were the opposite; they were introduced as a food crop and turned into an ornamental. This fall I want to try eating a dahlia tuber...
Ok, sorry, I got carried away. I'll stop with the trivia.