450-Wicked Plants: Mother Nature's Most Dangerous-Encore Presentation

Hi everybody, it's Joe. As my team and I enjoy these final days of the year with some time away, I didn't want to leave you without a great encore episode that I picked for today. It is a fun and fascinating episode about 13 of 39 plants that author Amy Stewart wrote about in her New York Times bestselling book, Wicked Plants. And yes, as you are about to hear, these plants are indeed certifiably wicked. So sit back and enjoy the conversation and I'll see you on the back side. Hi everybody, it's Joe Lippell, the Joe Behind Joe Gardener and welcome to the Joe Gardener show. A few episodes back, you likely recalled a wonderful conversation I had with Amy Stewart about her New York Times bestselling new book, The Tree Collectors. Today, we are back in conversation with Amy and another one of her bestselling books, Wicked Plants. This is a timeless book with 39 plants featured to be wicked in one way or another. You'll recognize many of these plants. In fact, it's not unlikely that right now you have at least one of them growing in your very own yard. And that was one of my biggest ahas from her book, one of the deadliest seeds grown in a pod from a vine that was very prominent in my childhood backyard. And it's amazing that I'm still here today because that seed could easily be mistaken for candy and you'll hear what I mean in just a minute. Amy Stewart is a prolific writer. In fact, she's written 14 books so far with over 1 million copies sold and translations into 18 languages. And here's a fun fact related to the book we're talking about today. In 2009, Wicked Plants was adapted into a national traveling exhibit that terrified children at science museums nationwide for over a decade. Wicked Plants is absolutely a fun and enlightening book and having the chance to talk about some of those wicked plants with Amy today makes it even better. So let's get started with today's episode. 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That's jogarnor.com slash UGS. Amy you're back and I'm so happy that you are and I am so enjoying this book. You write the coolest books I have to say and there's how many now you're up to a good chunk. Yeah, number 14. Oh. Yeah and everyone is worth a while and I'm not to 14 yet but I know I look forward to the fact that there are a few unread Amy Stewart books on my shelf. So oh, thank you. Oh, you're welcome. So thank you for writing this one as always wicked plants and what a great subtitle. The Weed that killed Lincoln's mother and other botanical atrocities. Who would not want to read this book just from that? So here's the thing Amy and I confess I emailed you in a bit of a panic about hour or two ago and reading your book. I do my outlines as I go and I make notes of what I want to talk about to set the stage for everybody. Amy's book, this book is great because there's a lot of plants in here. I think I counted 39 featured plants that are toxic in one way or another and in my outline that I showed Amy. I think I probably had 38 or the 39 on the list that I wanted to talk about. So that's why I said Amy, please help me because we can't talk about that many but what ones do you want to talk about? And they were all on my list by the way of course because if I listen to everyone in your book, they're going to be on the list. So anyway, all that to say, it's a great fun, very educational and lightning read that I really enjoy the format of because anybody can pick it up and read a chapter or two or three in a few minutes and learn a lot. And the problem with that for me was because every chapter was quick but it was so informative. I didn't want to put it down, which makes for a quick read because you just keep turning the pages, which is I think what you want. Yeah. Well, you know, I really, my old goal was to just be very entertaining with this. It's one of those things. You know, when I, well, let me just tell you, the way this whole thing even came about is that I was going around in greenhouses and talking to botanists and horticulturists for a book I wrote about the global flower industry. And I'd walk into somebody's green house and they would say, hey, before you leave, come over here and let me show you this thing I have grown in the corner. Now, I don't want my boss to know I have one of these. But and it would be some creepy, weird, very often poisonous, dangerous, illegal, horrifying of some kind. And I was like, well, you really go over to the dark side after a while when you load with plants long enough. And I just thought, you know, I don't need to do like a guidebook to a poisonous plant, right? Like, those already exist. But the stories are what intrigued me. So that's what made it fun for me was I just got to be very selective and only pick plants that had really interesting stories. I didn't care that it could kill somebody. I just wanted to know who it had killed. Wow. So it ends up being this quirky little weird book that's not at all comprehensive, but that's purely, purely entertaining at least for now. And you do such a good job of sourcing the information in all of these plants and then the stories behind them. Kudos to you for that and your others. Well, you know, what I really set out to do was to not like, I would go look at Wikipedia which was still kind of new in 2007, 2008 when I was writing this book. And anything that was on Wikipedia was what I didn't want to say. But then I'd have to go looking go, well, what does nobody know? And so it was like looking it through 200 year old medical journals, you know, reading really old newspapers, reading obituaries and really old newspapers. So it was all this kind of like, where can I go outside of the plant world to find stories about these plants? As I already said, you did a great job on it. And one thing I maybe want to talk about right off the bat because you mentioned it in one of the videos I watched and preparing for this, you mentioned the Chelsea Physic Garden and the importance of that and the history of it, which has so much more meaning to me now having heard you talk about that because I've been there in the last two years. I've never been to England until a couple of years ago. And I went there after the Chelsea flower show. And I wish I had known what you talked about before I went to the garden. I would have appreciated it even more. But can we just maybe let people know about that and the importance of that and why that was there to begin with? That's a big story right there. Yeah, this isn't really, and this is a really important message that I think people can get from this book, which is that, you know, plants are living green chemical factories, right? They're making all these chemicals for their own purposes. They're not thinking about us. They're doing it for themselves like to defend themselves against predators or for various reasons, attract pollinators, stuff like that. And some of those chemicals happen to be really useful as medicines and some many medicines are like helpful in the right zones and dangerous in the wrong dose, right? So there's a very thin line between medicine and poison. And if you think back the Chelsea Physic Gardens right in the middle of London and you go back a few hundred years and you think about what it would have been like to live in London in those days and you get sick and you get a fever, you get an upset stomach, whatever. You go to a pharmacist who would have been called like an apothecary. The only thing they have to offer you is plants. That's it. That's all they have. And they're either dried up or they're soaked in alcohol to extract those chemicals. So it's shelf stable. You know, if you get sick in the middle of winter, but the flower early blims in the summer, then you got to keep it on the shelf. So you have these pharmacists who were just handing out plants to people and hoping that would work. Usually it didn't like mostly it did not work. Okay. Usually it did. So the Chelsea Physic Garden was a place where those plants could be grown and where pharmacists could look at them and identify them. Because like you and I both know how hard it is to identify a plant. Even if you have great photographs or an app on your phone, yeah, imagine back in those days when all you would have had was a drawing or a woodcut in a book that was very hard to get your hands on because books were not so common in those days. So being able to see the real plan was extraordinarily useful for them, folks. And they also kept a garden of poisonous plants. So you would know which ones not definitely don't give these out. So the Chelsea Physic Garden is still there today and and all of those things still exist inside that garden. So it is this amazing experience of time travel. Yeah. To go to the Chelsea Physic Garden. It also really makes me appreciate the drugstore down the street. Thank you, Walgreens. I probably don't think it often enough. Super glad you're there. You really did put it in perspective. That was the Walgreens of the day. And I'll take the one today versus then. But how interesting with all the different plants that you listed. So in the interest of time and the fact that I don't want to miss any of the ones that you listed, but on your list that you provided, there's one that I had, you know, as I said, I had them all on my list. But what I want to start with just because it's the one that hits closest to home for me. And that's the rosary pea. And I grew up in Miami. And this is a this is a pea that is very common in the tropics. And you know, Miami, it's kind of that. But as a kid, this this vine and this pea and the pods were everywhere. And as you described in your book, there are this bright cherry red with a black tip inside of a pod. And and I can't believe, I guess some of my point is I can't believe that my mother didn't go down and hack everyone down that was within our, our block, you know, because they were everywhere. And I never even, I'm here today talking about it. So I must have not ever have eaten one because I wouldn't be here now. But they're so toxic and they were so prevalent in my backyard as a child, uh, scary to know now how deadly they are. So just tell us the story on that one. I love this one because I love what they look like. Yeah. They're very satisfying little creatures. You know, these seeds are, they're quite hard and round and smooth. And they kind of remind me of little ladybugs like their half a size and four of a ladybug. With just one black spot. Um, but this is a burst precutorious. And so the poison that comes from this is apron. And that may sound kind of familiar to people because it has been used as a poison and some kind of like international terrorism incidents before. So it is known as one of the most, uh, toxic plants in the world in terms of how much it would take to kill a person. But it is very prevalent, particularly like you say Florida and kind of kind of right around there. Um, also throughout South America. It's used for beads because it look at it already looks like a bead. Yes. So you punch a hole in it and run a string through it and you can make a very charming necklace. But punching that hole in it makes it easier for the poison to get into your digestive system. So, you know, it's a pretty hard shell. Maybe I don't want to, I don't want to encourage anyone to do this, but it could be that's following one. It might get all the way through your system without breaking down too much. But once you pierce that, uh, just putting it in your mouth could release some of that poison. And so I, after I wrote Wicked Plants, I was out to dinner one night with a woman who had three strands of abyss precutorious around her neck like, uh, like pearls, uh, rated together. Like what, you know, you've seen women wear necklaces like that. And I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I didn't know this woman very well. It's first time to meet with them. And, uh, and I just said, I just, I'm so fascinated that you're wearing that. Do you know what it is? And you know, I said, I told her and I said, you're wearing enough poison around your neck right now to kill everyone in this restaurant. And she took it off right then and I was like, can I have that? She looks like glowing. Yes. Oh, so you have it today? I'm going to be feeling fascinated with it. But you know, the other thing, Joe, is that it isn't good reminder like you grew up with this plant all around you. We can't really eradicate poisonous plants from our surroundings. Because again, plants had their defense mechanisms to keep from getting eaten. Most of the plants that you encounter all day every day are not, uh, breakfast food for you. They are not salad ingredients. They're not for you. They're not about you. You know, we tend to, if something's green and growing in the ground, we tend to think that it's for us and that it's all organic and it's plant-based and it's all natural. And we'll just put in our, pop it in our mouths. And that's a terrible idea. We'll say, yeah, the plan kingdom makes some of the most deadly poisons in the world, including apron, including strict nine, including rice. Yes. And so we have to have a healthy respect for plants the same way we do for other elements of nature like wild animals or that ocean. Like plants are very powerful and we've got to respect that power and not take it for granted. Your book really was a strong reminder of that to me, you know, being involved with plants all of my, most of all of my life. That's one element of it that I don't think about every day, but having read this book and all the, just the small amount of whatever's in that plant and the damage it can do really open my eyes to being much more mindful of how I am interacting with various plants that I don't know anything else about. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll go on a hike with someone or be walking through someone's garden and they'll pull off a leaf for a berry off a shrub. Yeah. And say, here, try this and I'm like, you know what? I'm good. Yes. That's my point. Well said, I'm sad of sandwich. I'm fine. I've got a power of our, my backpack. I'll be all right. And I'm just put things in my mouth that people have to me anymore. I think they too. Yeah. I agree in this book. If you, if you weren't that way before now, read this book and you will be. So you would be with that. Amy, let's hear about some of the stories that you love from your book and some of the plant features. Is there one you want to start with? Yeah. You know, I think the most beautiful Poisonous plant, the one that I really wanted to grow more than any when I was sort of growing my own Poisonous plants, when it's cast. I knew you're going there. And it was not top of the list. Yes. It's gorgeous. Georgia State Botanical Garden, which is an Athens, which is just an hour away from me. I love going there. And every time I do, I see the caster being growing in all its glory. And it's everywhere in the botanical garden. In a dry by and I stand there and I look at it and I go, if people only knew how dense this plant is. So with that, please continue. It's already interrupt, but I can relate. Yeah. It has these very dramatic dark red leaves. It has these really incredible flower spikes. It's, it's a super cool spooky look at plant. But those seeds do contain rice in which I think it's the plant poison that most people have probably heard of. And it would only take a few of those seeds if they were chewed really well to kill a person. And it's really surprising how little we know about a lot of these poisons. So rice and got kind of famous in the 70s when there was a Russian dissident named Yorgy Markov, who was assassinated by the KGB. He was in London. And after he died at the hospital, they found a little pellet in his leg that contained rice in. And this is in the 70s and nobody knew how much rice and it took to kill a person. And they actually had to do an experiment where they made an equivalent amount of rice and injected it into a pig the way about as much as Yorgy Markov had weighed to see if it would kill the pig. Like that's how little we know about some of these poisons. Now, people do grow in their gardens and I just want to say, you don't have to run screaming away from just don't eat it. Yeah. And you can cut off, you can cut them back so you don't have the seeds. Certainly people who are worried about toddlers putting things in their mouths or pet seating things can just trim them back. That's an easy enough thing to do. That pellet in the in the leg, did the Russians inject that into him? Yes. They injected it on the end of an umbrella. So it's called the umbrella murder because they had an umbrella with a spike or an injection mechanism and they stabbed him in the leg. And it went into his leg. And I guess he was so quickly unwell that he couldn't point it out to anyone at the hospital. It took him a while to find it. But you know, here's the other crazy thing about rice and though. And especially this idea that Castro beans are growing gardens everywhere. I was at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and they did this exhibit about wicked plans when the book came out and they had a lot of Castro bean. And they were telling me that after 9, 11, the, um, I guess the newly formed Department of Homeland Security came around wanting to see their Castro beans and wanting to like document where those plants were and they were like, we're just, because it could be a possible bioterrorism agent. We're just trying to keep track. And they were just like, you guys like they're in garden centers everywhere. Like you can't make a, you know, it's this disconnect between like how the word of culture world works and how counterterrorism works. You know, as every garden center sells these, you can buy these seeds from every plant catalog the same with opium poppies. Yeah. You can get these easily. No one can put them on a list and like come inspect them once a week to make sure they haven't been. That's not going to be right. Oh, it's just a funny disconnect we have, I think in the plant world. Isn't it though? Okay. I'm leaning into this conversation. I love it so much already. Well, let me tell you another one that's actually a little bit connected to Brooklyn, Botanic Garden. And this, we did this week of plants kind of exhibit thing. And they kept urging me to not talk about these plants as being deadly because I didn't want to scare people away from coming to the garden. Then I got a call from Timeout magazine. So I don't know if you've ever seen this magazine. It's like a tourism magazine for New York. It's like, what's happening this week in New York? And they asked me to write a piece about how to murder your dinner guest using poisonous plants. And they were going to use that to promote the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to exhibit. And I thought, oh, they're not going to be happy about this at the garden. So I followed my publicist and asked what to do. And he said, better to ask forgiveness than permission. There you go. Like any true publicist. So here's how I came up with how to murder your dinner guest was monke's hood. Oh, that can hide him. Which is a common garden plant, right? It's quite beautiful. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Little blue, beautiful little spikes of beautiful flowers. But it has this taproot that really resembles like a parsnip or a carrot or something like that. And if you weren't looking too closely, you might make a mistake along those lines. I guess you could mistake it for something like parsley, maybe a little bit. And so it has actually been used to kill people at a dinner. So I was like, well, all right, I guess if you are going to really do this, you'd have plausible deniability with monke's hood because you could claim it was an honest mistake. And it doesn't seem to really have much of a taste. But also the symptoms start out being kind of like digestive symptoms. So your dinner guest starts to get a little sick, could just look like food poisoning. You put them in a cab and soon them home and then you get on a plane for South America or wherever you're going to escape to, I think, committed this prime. And maybe you'd get away with it. But anyway, so yeah, the plot of a perfect murder mystery, I think, would revolve around something like monke's hood. And so here's something else that I think is worth talking about. And I'll give you another plan as an example of this, which is himlock. So himlock people really know it as the plant that was used to kill socrates. So Socrates was put to death and capital punishment. And that's the that's the plant they use. But we see it everywhere, Joe. Don't we? I mean, you see it. It looks like Queen Anne's lay. So for people who aren't familiar, it's similar to Queen Anne's lay. So it has purple spots on the stems, but it has these beautiful sprays of white flowers. And it's in the carrot family. So it looks really a lot like carrots or, you know, I don't know, maybe what parsley, parsley, yep, you could easily make that mistake. So after the book came out, I got a call from a guy who had been poisoned by himlock. And it was so fascinating to me to get to talk to someone who'd been through it. Yeah. And this is exactly what happened to him as he was growing carrots in his backyard. And himlock is a weed. I mean, when I lived in California, I was pulling it out of my garden all the time. It just will show up as a weed. And he lives also in the Pacific Northwest and it turned up as a weed in among his carrots. And he harvested some carrots to make kimchi. So like a preserved sour crowdy kind of a thing. And sure, some of them came up white, but that happens with carrots. You get white carrots, you get purple carrots. So he didn't think much of it. He made this kimchi that in hindsight, he realized had himlock in it. He ate a little bit of it and then got in the car to drive to a friend's house. On the way, he noticed that his peripheral vision didn't work. He could not move his eyes from side to side. And that was the beginning of the paralysis that sets in with a himlock poison. It sort of, it sort of paralyzes you from top to bottom. And fortunately, he was able to get right to an emergency room, but he also had the presence of mine to call a poison control center. And this is so important because poison control centers, you got to give them so much respect. They're much more tuned in to poisons, lamp poisons, other types of poisons than the ER doctor who might use them with everything. So they were able to quickly troubleshoot, ask him the right questions, narrow it down, hit on this possibility and they called ahead to the emergency room and said, he's coming. We suspect himlock poisoning. Here's what you want to look for. Here's what you want to test for. And so he was all right. He recovered by it. It does show you how easily that could happen to anyone. That could have totally happened to me. I mean, any of us did he know that he had accidentally put some himlock into his dish? He didn't realize it till the poison control center suggested it. Okay. So yeah, he didn't realize it at the time. That's amazing that the poison control people were able to key out, you know, what that probably was. That's what they're so good at. They're so good at narrowing it down and giving a range of possibilities to the ER. And let me also just say, and actually I'll segue into another. Okay. I'll segue into say go palm, which is very toxic to dogs. Yeah. The A let me just say that the ASPCA has their own animal poison control center. And exact same deal. If you suspect that your pet has been poisoned, of course, get them to the vet right away. But call the ASPCA's poison control center on the way because they're only thinking about poisons. Yeah. Here again, they might be able to call ahead, get some information to your vet that will help them respond quicker. But the thing with say go palm is that this is a house plant. So it's a side cat. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of folks have seen it. It's got this kind of very big round, woody sort of base. All the space. Yeah. All the space. Thank you. And then these sort of how would you describe it? They were almost like fern like. Yes. They're very stiff and rigid and spiky. Yes. When it touched them. In that like in a place like Florida or actually throughout the South, you can row it outside in your yard. But everywhere around the country, people use them as houseplants and dogs will chew on them or will will chew on bits that have dropped off of them. And it's very toxic to dogs. And unfortunately, after the book came out, I have heard from so many people whose dogs were poisoned by say go palm and said, you know, I had no idea. I never would have bought this plant. I've known. Yeah. So the thing I'll say about that, particularly with pets, is that, you know, plants don't come with a warning label. No. For good reason, because it's like, where do you draw the line? Right? Because you shouldn't be eating anything except the plants that are sold in that, in that edible section of your garden center. So nothing else there. But are you really going to put warning labels on everything? But I really do think the deal is that if you have a pet who kind of gets into everything. Yeah. Who's who wants to taste? I mean, some of us have pets who would never walk further than their food dish for their dinner, right? They're too lazy. But I am cat like that. Yeah. But um, uh, otherwise take a look. The ASPCA has a lot of good information about common plants that are poisonous to pets. And it's not a bad idea to look around at your house plants and what you've got growing in the parts of your yard that they have access to and maybe replace some things. Yeah. How about a bad idea to do not a bad idea at all. And you know, there's some very common plants on that list from the ASPCA from your book. There are a lot of bulbs that are toxic, allowed, different bakia lilies and and then lilies real quick. Last year, I'm planting a lot more bulbs around here. And lilies was one of the ones I was adding. And, uh, you know, Peggy, I'm a gummer. I'm sure we were in conversation about it. I said, just be careful with, you know, with cats, you know, and I've got, I've got some cats around here. And I thought, oh, no, you know, and so, um, I grew them to bloom. And then I honestly took them out for fear of when our cat's getting to them. Yeah. And there again, it's kind of like, do you have the kind of cat that just gets into everything or not? And when we talk about lilies, we're not talking about daily. Oh, thank you. Yes. Thank you. We're talking about the kind of lilies that you buy at the flower shop like Oriental Yes, yes. Or gays or lilies, things like that. So it is what's growing in your garden. It's also the bouquet that you may be brought home and have on your kitchen table. And, and I seem to be the one who collects these stories like people will come up to me after my talks and stuff and say, yeah, my cat, you know, I came home one day and the vase was knocked off on the floor. You know how cats do know, you've been drinking the water and then they had been munching on the plan and, and it causes a kidney failure in cats. And there's not a lot that can be done about it really. Amy, did you have any inclination that in writing this book and mentioning some of these plants and their toxicity to pets that this would be a lifesaver, literal lifesaver to pet owners for future situations? You know, I didn't like I was really surprised. Honestly, I was surprised that I heard so much more from people concerned about their pet safety than their children's safety. It's, it is kind of funny like this. It really is a huge concern for people. And, but, but valid. But also with little kids like, you know, under a certain age, kids are likely to just put things in their mouth. Yeah. You know, so there's, there is an example in the book with Oliander, another very common shrub. Sure is. Certainly throughout the South, every way on the freeways in the parks, it's just a boring landscape. Stroud that you see. It's ubiquitous. If ever there was a ubiquitous Southern plant, it's Oliander. Yeah. But it contains cardiac glycosides that can stop the heart and the color, the colors of those flowers, they're very candy colored, you know, red and pink flowers. And there is a story in the book about some toddlers who ate some and, yeah. So it's something to be sort of aware of. You know, another thing gardeners ask me about is can these poisons end up in compost, which is a great question. And, and the answer as far as I was able to find out is that in some cases, yes, but those poisons don't then transfer from the compost to the next plants that you're growing, like the tomatoes that you might add a little compost to your tomato bed. Yeah. They're not going to end up in the tomatoes because it doesn't work that way. They can't travel like that. Right. No, but these are all very interesting questions. And yeah, it sparked a lot of questions from people that I was not expecting to hear. What about gyms and weed or the datura? Yeah. So here's another one that is interesting as a, as a garden plant or, or even a weed. So datura for, for people who don't know, this is in the nightshade family. And it's those beautiful trumpet shaped flowers. This is the flower that Georgia O'Keefe painted. I mean, I think they're gorgeous. Yeah, they are. And there's a lot of different dead tours out there. You can buy them at the garden center. They're beautiful and containers. I love them. But they do on being, being a, being a more of a dangerous sort of nightshade, they can interfere with heart rate, interfere with breathing, cause a lot of dizziness and at the right levels and hallucinations. And could kill someone at high enough levels. And one of the interesting things about datura is you can get a little of the poison through your skin. So it has some transdermal effects, which is not true of all these plants, but it is true of some tobacco's another one where you can get a little through your skin. So I was in New Mexico. I was visiting a friend. We pull up in front of her house and she hasn't pulled weeds in a while. She's in Albuquerque. There's some weeds in the fray yard and they were all dead to her. And they were all in blue and they were breathtaking. But the minute we roll up, I'm like, you can't let your kids around. You got to get rid of these. She had toddlers at the time. You can't let the boys anywhere near this. And she's like, it's fine. The kids aren't getting it. You know, they don't play in the fray yard. No big deal. But I just, there's so much child safety that we do. You know, the little outlet covers and car seats and the health, like kids go for a bike ride these days and they get on a helmet and knee pads. I mean, you ride her bicycles barefoot in the rain, right? Nobody. That's right. But we work so hard to protect our kids and here's this poison splag growing all over this fray yard. And so I said, all right, well, look, you can get, the kids could get this through their skin. Like if they roll around in it, there could be some transdermal effects and their bodies are little. So, you know, it's not like a full size adult getting it. I said, so the symptoms you want to watch out for are if their face gets red and flushed, if they're sort of babbling and not making a lot of sense. If they have trouble breathing or if they're heart stops and they mean she got it. Okay. When you get out of here and she made her four husband tear it, you know, it's been all weekend tearing up the dad, Jura out of the front yard. But it's just interesting how we go to, we'll go to such links. But then when it's a plant, we just trust it. We just think it's green. It's all natural. What's the harm, you know? Wolves and sheep's clothing. Yes. Plant style. You know, we, I mentioned, I think at the top of this podcast, we wanted to do this podcast in the spirit of the Halloween week, you know? And I think you've got some plant stories related to kind of a Halloween or theme, right? I do have some creepy Halloween stories. So one of them is a plant called Malamou Head, which grows in Mexico and probably a little bit in Southwest United States too, I would think. And so the story I have about this, let me just tell you the story because it's so creepy. It is a young woman. I think she's a teenager. She's, she's on a trip. She goes on a hike and she gets back from the hike and she feels something on her back. She can't see it, but she goes to the doctor and she has a red rash in the middle of her back in the exact shape of a hand. A hand print. Like how creed does that not sound like the beginning of a war movie to you? It does. I feel like I could just write the rest of it from there. But it turns out that what had happened is that probably her boyfriend had accidentally handled this plant, which has, you know, this very, what do you call it? I want to say like photo toxic kind of, sad, very irritating sap. Let me just say that. And he probably just put his hand on her back as they were walking along. You know, maybe she's wearing a tank top or something. He just puts his hand between her shoulder blades and transfers enough of that under her back that she got this rash. He's actually put his hand. Oh my gosh. Well, no, so creepy. Yeah. It's good to put the pieces together and get the rest of the story figured out. So we know what happened. But otherwise that could have been a serious mystery. Well, was speaking of what about there's a Hitchcock connection on one particular plant that I think he listed. Right. And so, you know, like anytime I can work like a Hitchcock thriller into a book on plants, I'm so excited. Like this is exactly my jam. So this one is actually not technically a plant. But you know, my, my publisher was never going to let me do like wicked fun guy and wicked bacteria and all this comes to things. So I didn't do that. Griff, griff, a lot of greenish things into this book. Fair enough. So cyanobacteria toxic blue green algae is something that's probably familiar to a lot of people because it can build up in our waterways. And sometimes we see these signs posted saying, don't go swimming. Don't let your dog in the water. We've got toxic blue green algae. Yes. Yeah. That happens. It's kind of naturally occurring. So it's just, it's just a overgrowth that can happen in a river or a lake. And so here's the story. So it's the early 60s that Santa Cruz, California people wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of seagulls crashing to the ground, flying into people's houses, flying into their cars. It's like they don't come down. And once people went out with their flashlights to see what was going on. And the, and the birds seem to, they were so disoriented by the lights that it seemed like they were almost attacking people like flying into people, right? Terrifying, weird, unexplained phenomenon happening in the middle of the night. Yeah. And it took a while for anyone to figure out what was going on. Now, what we later found out was going on was an outbreak of toxic blue green algae in Monterey Bay and the fish ate the algae and the fish got sick. And then the birds ate the fish and birds got sick. And they kind of all came crashing down to the ground all at once as a result of this poisoning. However, the his cut connects that there was this young filmmaker living in this Annacruz mountains at the time. And he was trying to adapt a Daphne D'Amurie short story called the birds into a film, but he was having trouble figuring out how to make it into a movie. And he opens up the newspaper and he reads about what happens in Santa Cruz. And now he's got his phone. And I just think if you can take basically Ponskum and give that credit for one of the all great Hitchcock films, I'm all in on that story. Absolutely. Let's stick with the theme because we have, I think the Salem, which trials that has a plant theme issue in it for sure. Yes. Now, so this is, this is again, another one. This is a fungus, not technically a plant, but it's a fungus that grows on cereal crops like rye and other grains or got. So it's basically kind of like a plant parasite of plant disease, you know, farmers have to deal with plant diseases. And an Irgot contains precursors to LSD. So it's like, like, you get, you can get crazy and very unpleasant, frightening hallucinations from consuming rye grains that have been infested with Irgot. And the really tricky thing about this is that it survives the process of being baked into bread or brewed into beer. So going back at least as far as the Middle Ages, we have records of these outbreaks happening. Sometimes in a little village, the whole village kind of goes crazy all once. It's like they all went to Woodstock at the same time, but it didn't mean to. But it's terrifying and it can actually be deadly. Like it's not as much fun as I'm making it sound like. And nobody really knew what it was. So by the time that you know, European started to colonize the Americas, Europe was just starting to figure this out and to understand like we think it's connected to this weird thing that grows on grains when it's very rainy and conditions are just right. But but here in the Americas, we wouldn't have heard about that yet. So one theory and it's only one of many about what happened at the Salem, which trials is we had all these girls in the town of Salem, Massachusetts that went crazy all at once. Yeah. And at the time, the only logical explanation for that was that they had been bewitched because that makes total sense. It's right. If you look back, it turns out that the conditions were right for Ergot poisoning. They had been a very wet winner and so forth. It kind of could have been a year for that. And while Europeans were starting to figure out that all you got to do is rinse the grains with assault water solution and that that knocks it, knocks it out. They didn't know that yet in the Americas. Yeah. No, it's at least possible that all these women were put to death for bewitching people in the town of Salem, Massachusetts. And all that had happened was that these folks were experiencing hallucinations brought on by Ergot poisoning. But you know, I'm fascinated by these foods that we eat that have some poisonous component to them, but we eat them anyway. And so it's another good reminder of what we talk about processed foods. Now awful, that is, but we've been processing foods for centuries, right? And so like corn is a really good example of this. Yeah. Like corn, as you know, is a plant that is from the Americas, right? It's a new world. It's a native crop. Yep. And native people knew how to eat corn safely as a major part of their diet. But European showed up and they had never seen corn before. And they were amazed. Like here's a crop that I can grow anywhere. It's super easy to grow. It's very nutritious and you can store it up and eat it in the winter. Like imagine finding a whole new thing. How to gory of things that you can eat in the winter time that didn't require, you know, that you could store up. So they took corn back to Europe and it started to become a widespread sort of peasant food, but they did not bother to learn from the Native Americans. Or it's possible that the Native Americans just chose not to tell them that you cannot eat corn morning, noon and night and stay healthy because you will get this very severe niacin deficiency, a B vitamin deficiency that causes a disease called polygrap. And, um, Pelagra is for a long time. Nobody knew what caused it. It was one of these big mysteries, but it came from eating exclusively corn morning, noon and night, which is not safe to do, which is why Native Americans combine their foods in a very particular way. So, but the vampire connection here is that, um, the symptoms of Pelagra are that your skin breaks out like in blisters when you go out into the sun. And you can't sleep at night. You're sort of delirious and you're, you know, sleep during the day and you're up all night. You can't digest normal food and you get this very pale, ghastly sort of appearance, um, before you die. So it looks like the vampire myths that came out of Eastern Europe, this sort of cal Dracula myths were really about Pelagra victims. And it was because they were eating this new plant from here that they didn't know how to eat safely. Makes sense if it's a new food that you love to eat and then you just can't get enough of it. So you're eating it three meals a day or maybe more. And that's probably pre popcorn. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, it didn't make me think a lot about Europeans coming over here and how they just, they came ashore and immediately had to live off the land. Yes. And how challenging that was. Right. Because Native people who lived here had been here for centuries and centuries and they knew what to eat and how and when us Europeans, we showed up. And the only information we had is if a plant looked like it was kind of related to something we had back. So you know, like Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous. Yeah. And that sounds funny now. We're like, oh, what's the drama to people? But they were super smart because they were like, that is in my shade. Yeah. We have nightchains back in Europe and they're, you know, like a trope of Beladonna, deadly nightshade. Yeah. We have that back in Europe and we know how dangerous that is. So we're not going to eat it. And it, but I, so now I've originally the Italians were persuaded. But even then the English still didn't want to eat it. The English were like, well, the Italians will eat anything like this. And don't trust them. If that Italians were like, we are going to invent a whole new cuisine based on this. Thank you very much. So it worked out in the end. You just mentioned deadly nightshade and there's some stories or a major story there that you wrote about related to that. Yeah. And this is another one about how sometimes we can be so trustful of plans. Do you know what do you have deadly nightshade kind of growing as a weed? It's a low growing plan with little purple berries. But they can get a little bigger and more shrugged like I think. So, uh, and yeah. So it's one of those, the nightshade family is so interesting because it has tomatoes and peppers and eggplants in it that we love to eat. But it has also has tobacco and it's got, you know, this, uh, trope of Beledon or this deadly nightshade that's very poisonous. So fascinating family of plants. But, um, this is comes, comes from reading medical journals as research for this book. I found a sort of medical journal article about an elderly woman who would go on a walk every day and she would pull a couple of pretty purple berries off a shrug and pop them in her mouth and eat them and keep walking. And she just got to where she was more and more delirious and kind of hallucinate. And because she's elderly, it's easy to sort of show. Well, you know, these things happen as you get older. But in fact, she was very slowly poisoning herself with the deadly nightshade. And it took a long time for anyone to figure it out because if she doesn't mention it and if no one else is on the walk with her, how are you ever going to know? But as it turns out, it was seasonal. Oh, so it was only happening when those plants were in bloom. Okay. They are fruiting when they were in fruiting, right? Right. So that's why it was happening every late summer or fall and then she'd get better again. Interesting. So somebody's saying, so what's up here because she's not the lady she used to be in the summertime? What's, why is that exactly? And once you realize it's seasonal, you have to start asking yourself about fruits, vegetables, maybe pollen, you know, suddenly, suddenly the plant world is where you want to look for answers. Yes. And this is when back in the 1800s or so. No, no, this was kind of recent. Oh, this a recent one. Oh, yeah. Now the story in your book featured three children in one weekend who died from eating the berries. Yeah. Right. Yeah, there's plenty of much older stories about people who, because again, they're very charming looking, you know, they look at a bull. If they don't taste bad, sometimes a poisons plant will have a very bitter taste. And that's enough to stop you. But not all of them are like that. You know, elder, elder berries are contain some cyanide until they are fully, fully ripe. And the cyanide level goes down. And that's actually something we haven't talked about yet, which is that plants will move poisons around. So in the case of elder berries, when the, if you think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, as the fruit is just ripening, it's contains a lot of cyanide because we want to keep the birds away from it. We need the next generation to actually succeed. But once it's fully ripe and it's dropped to the ground and those seeds can germinate, we don't need so much cyanide in there. So people will make elderberry wine, but you should not drink raw, unprocessed, elderberry juice because there could still be enough cyanide in there to cause you problems. But the process of making it into wine or jam or something like that, you know, you lose the cyanide at that point. Yeah. I remember the story when I was telling somebody I had an elderberry tree in my yard and I didn't know it was that until I figured it out. And then it was in it was fruiting and I ate some. And they licked at me and said, well, you know those have cyanide at her. Like what? Fortunately, I didn't know. I mean, I just fortunately was ripe when I got it, but I've got for a bit. I did not know that. Kind of important. Right. Right. Yeah. And it is a shame. You know, we sort of lose our knowledge of the natural world and and and so those things can happen. Amy, is this night the deadly night sheet also the thing that women would put into their pupils to dilate them or something like that and they could go blind from that. Recall something. Yeah. A trope of balladana, which contains atropine and it would it dilates the pupils, which was considered very beautiful. You know, it really opens up your so it makes you have this look of childlike wonder about you, which in women, you know, it's considered very attractive to look very, very young and delighted all the time. Sure. And but you know, so here's another great example of that though. Angel's trumpet. Do you sure? Pregnancy it. We all love those, right? Yeah. I actually know somebody this happened to. I talked about in the book, but I have personal connection with someone who was out pruning one with their hands. So memo to self, like we're gloves in the garden, but she was out really cutting ours back. And then she rubbed her eyes and she got some, she got some of it in her eyes. And it did that thing where blue or pupil open. But only on one side, because she only rubbed one eye. She went inside looking, you know, looked in the mirror or something and saw that and thought, I'm having a stroke. Like, you know, she goes rushing off to the emergency room. And at the ER, if they know what they're doing, they know it's called gardeners madriasis. Huh. It's like a thing that happens enough with gardeners that they have a name, which is you get a little bit of a plant that contains atropine and you get in your eye, just rub in your eye and your pupil is just blown out. Wow. That's what causes it. And it comes away on its own. She was calling, but kind of scary. Sounds scary. Sounds awful. I know. There is one I knew about before reading your book that was interesting that you wrote about it and gave some more information. The stinging tree in Australia. Oh, yes. Talk about that one. Yeah. So painful plants, right? So a lot of people when they hear this book title, wicked plants, they think like poison ivy, poison oak. That is not the most painful plant in the world. No, most painful plan in the world is this giant stinging tree in southern Australia, which looks like peach fuzz, leaves. They're these tiny little needles. They're called tree combs. So small that you can barely see them. But everyone contains a very tiny dose of a potent neurotoxin. So they get up under your skin very easily if you touch them. Sometimes they'll even break off and kind of float around in the wind and the right conditions. You could accidentally breathe some or get them in your eyes or your mouth. And it's said to be the worst pain that a plant can inflict. And if you really got thrown into one of these bushes and got it all over you, it can be such a shocking amount of pain that people have had heart attacks from that from just the pain. And the pain can last up to a year. And it can be reactivated by heat or sunlight or cold. So any time after it's gone away, it can come back. So I tracked down the botanist who specializes in this plan because you will know for every plant in the world, there's a botanist somewhere who must have voted their lives to that plan. So I found her and I asked her about this. And she says that when she's not working in the field, the kit that she carries with her is a hair removal strip. And bottle of whiskey. Because what you got to do is you've got to put is the minute you're stunned. You put a hair removal strip on it and yank it off, which is really going to hurt. But it might get some of those little tiny hairs out of your skin. Yeah. And that is such a painful thing to do that you take a shot of whiskey first. And then you do it. But that's her. That's her advice. And the hair removal strip is like tape, but much stronger. Is that what that is? Like tape, but much stronger. Yes. Exactly. It's the sort of thing that you know, you might use to remove unwanted facial hair or other such things. So yeah, it's like getting waxed. Yeah. Right, right. Um, I think in your book is what I made note of this, but it's so agonizing that people have committed suicide to get away from the pain. Yeah. It can be right. It, I mean, if you really go all the way, you know, full body into it, you don't have it enough, you know, maybe you're in shorts and a t shirt, it can be very, very agonizing pain. And there's not a lot that anyone can do about it. Unfortunately. And did you write this or did I make note of this to ask you about, um, you know, as animals are going by it, like herds of horses would would encounter it and they would be so agonizing to them that they would run off a cliff. Yeah, I've heard this story as well. I mean, you can imagine an animal in the face of that much pain is just going to start to run. Yeah. Right. And they're not going to really be able to think straight. So. Oh, such a happy conversation. I mean. Oh. Well, it's a conversation. It's Halloween. We can do this. This is true. This is true. Oh, snake root. We didn't talk about the plant that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother, right? Oh, right. And so President Lincoln's mother had a encounter with a plant that didn't work out so. And this is another great example of what happens when you are living, you know, so, so again, our European ancestors showing up here and not really understanding the lay of the land. So here's the deal is back in his time and before. cows. If you had cattle, like you might just have a cow or two, right? That's grazing on whatever it can find. You've just turned it loose in some fields and it's eating whatever is there. So cows would eat this plant, this white snake root, you could throw him regosa. And it contained a poison that would make the cows very sick. The poison would end up in their milk and people would drink the milk and get sick and die. And this was called milk sickness and no one knew what caused it for a long time. And so Abraham Lincoln's mother when Abe was only nine years old, his mother died of milk sickness. Nancy hangs Lincoln along with an aunt and an uncle. So people knew that milk sometimes could make you very sick, but people were living off the land. They kind of had to eat and drink what they had and it didn't happen all the time. So it was another one of those like how do we figure out what causes this? Another interesting thing about that story though, I'll tell you is that they start figuring it out in other parts of the country. So like in the Chicago newspapers, they were figuring out what kill what causes milk sickness. News had not reached folks in Atlanta or in Kentucky yet. So the hero of this story is the USDA and those farmers bulletins that get sent out. That was how news got out to farmers about how to grow food safely and economically. And it was sort of like the social media of the day. Here's how we're going to get the word out. They'd send out those farmers bulletins and let farmers know. And so they're really the unsung hero. It's actually a lot of stories in this book doing incredible scientific research and then disseminating that very necessary information. How interesting. Yeah. I think these plants are fascinating. I enjoyed growing them. I had a little poison garden for a while in my own at my house, which was a lot of fun because some of these plants are hard to come by. You know, you can't walk into a garden center and ask for mandrake. But I someone offered me some and I'm like, oh, yeah, I want to grow mandrake like that sounds amazing. So it is very intriguing to grow these sorts of plants when you can get them. And I made like a spooky goth garden with them. Moonstones and skeletons. And I really like I had a lot of fun with it. But it was not super practical because you know, how many people are you really going to poison? Probably not too many. So you know, it became the cocktail garden later on, which turned out to be much more useful to me. Still it was fun to dabble in a poison garden. Yeah, that was fun to see. I'm glad you included a little peek of that in your video that I would have referenced earlier earlier. And hopefully we'll put a link in there and people can watch that also and get a taste of that. Man, you mentioned mandrake, but I don't think that was one of the ones we talked about in our list. Did we? We didn't talk about mandrake, but it's another night shade. So it's also one that causes, you know, hallucinations and so forth. Okay. But the thing about mandrake is it has this carrot-like root that often looks like a human, sort of a strange, man-gold-looking human. So there's all these old, old legends about you pull a mandrake out and it's screened. Oh, that's right. The screaming I can promise you that doesn't happen. Okay. Yeah. No, it was sort of one of those like middle ages, which new kind of things. It's not a super attractive plant to grow because it's just like a little rosette of leaves. And if you're lucky, it'll bloom. I could never get mind-to-pulling, but I was super intrigued to be able to grow. Yeah. Yeah. So no screaming though. No screaming. A lot of myths and misinformation in the plant world as we both know. I'm telling you what, we only covered what 13 plants here today. But each plant Amy wrote about throughout her book, which is another 26. We didn't cover is equally interesting. And so are the stories that accompany the plant featured. So I encourage you to read this book because it will expand your botanical knowledge in a very pragmatic way. Plus it's just a really fun and interesting read. If you'd like to go back and listen to this episode again, of course you can do that. Wherever you consume your podcast, but if you go to our website at joegardener.com, under the podcast tab, and this is episode number 450. Not only is the replay there, but you can read the show notes that we created from the conversation with related links and pictures that Amy provided. Or if you want to watch this conversation and this is a good one for that, then head over to our YouTube channel, Joe Gardner TV and enjoy watching Amy tell those stories. And while you're there, we have another YouTube channel that has 12 seasons of my Emmy award-winning public television series, growing a greener world, all the episodes there. And if you're looking for some great gardening TV, check out our YouTube channel, GGW TV. That's going to do it for today. Thanks as always to my team, Amy Prentice, Brendan O'Reilly and Christine LaFond. And thanks to all of you who have joined me today. My goal for every podcast is to help you take the guesswork out of gardening by teaching you the why do behind the how to so that you can become a better, smarter, more confident gardener. I'll be back here again next Thursday for another episode of the Joe Gardner Show. And I look forward to having you right back here to join me for that. Until then, have a great week, everybody. Take care and I'll see you back here really soon. Thanks for listening to the Joe Gardner Show. The podcast where it's all about gardening and learning to grow like a pro, no experience required. For more information, podcasts and how to videos, visit us online at Joe Gardner.com.