All plants contain toxins which continue to work after leaf fall,so how worms are able to stomach dead grass and leaf litter has long been a mystery British scientists have cracked the global earthworm mystery: they have worked out how the planet’s much subterranean reprocessing system copes with the poisons that would choke most herbivores.
Earthworms underwrite almost all life on soil: they drag fallen leaves below the soil and digest them, to excrete that wealthy mix of loam and living things called topsoil. Every year, and 35 billion tons of dead grass and leaf litter get turned over by the worms and other soil fauna. But the catch is that some plants are really toxic,and all plants contain some toxins designed by evolution to discourage demolition by herbivores, and these toxins carry on working even after leaf fall.
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Source: theguardian.com