Wicked Plants (19 page)

Although useful for treating burns and scrapes, the saponins found in the plant can cause convulsions; paralysis; and severe irritation of the mouth, throat, and digestive tract.

Bulbs contain a variety of toxins that can cause severe drooling, depression, tremors, and heart problems. The scent of bulb fertilizers, which are made with bonemeal, can prove to be too much for some dogs, who might dig up a newly planted bed and chew on a few bulbs before realizing their terrible mistake.

Common houseplant, also called dumbcane. Contains calcium oxalate crystals that can burn the inside of the mouth, cause drooling and swelling of the tongue, and possibly lead to kidney damage.

A small succulent with bright red, yellow, or pink flowers often sold as a blooming indoor plant. It contains a class of cardiac steroids known as bufadienolides that can cause heart damage.

All parts of lilies are toxic to cats, causing kidney failure and death within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Think twice before bringing a
potted Easter lily into the house, and keep floral arrangements containing lilies well out of reach of your whiskered friends.

Marijuana can depress a pet’s nervous system and lead to seizures and comas. If you have to take your stoned pet to the vet for treatment, fess up so the animal gets the right care. Don’t worry: vets are used to the “it belonged to my roommate” story.

Also called heavenly bamboo, this ornamental shrub produces cyanide, causing seizures, coma, respiratory failure, and death.

DENDROCNIDE MOROIDES

The diminutive stinging tree has been called the most feared tree in Australia. It reaches about seven feet in height and produces tempting clusters of red fruit that resemble raspberries. Every inch is covered with fine silicon hairs that resemble peach fuzz and contain a virulent neurotoxin. Simply brushing up against the plant results in unbearable pain that may last up to a year. In some cases, the shock of the pain can be so great that it brings on a heart attack.

The hairs themselves are so tiny that they easily penetrate the skin and are almost impossible to pull out. The silicon does not break down in the bloodstream, and the toxin itself is surprisingly strong and stable. In fact, it remains active even in old, dry specimens of the plant. The pain can be reactivated for months afterward by extreme hot or cold, or simply by touching the skin. Even walking through the forest where stinging trees are present can pose a threat. The tree sheds its fine hairs constantly, and passersby run the risk of inhaling them or getting them in the eyes.

A soldier remembers being stung by the tree during his training
in 1941. He fell right into the plant, coming into full body contact with it. He was tied to his hospital bed for three weeks in pure agony. Another officer was stung so badly that he committed suicide to get away from the pain. Humans are not the only ones affected—newspaper accounts from the nineteenth century include reports of horses dying from the sting.

Anyone walking through the Australian rain forest would be well advised to keep an eye out for this plant. It can easily penetrate most kinds of protective clothing. A common treatment is the application of a hair removal wax strip, which will pull out the plant’s fine hairs along with your own. Experts recommend a shot of whisky before attempting this treatment.

Meet the Relatives
     The stinging tree is part of the nettle family; the genus includes
Dendrocnide moroides
, believed to be the most painful.
D. excelsa, D. cordifolia, D. subclausa
, and
D. photinophylla
are also referred to as stinging trees.

How much could the tiny, fine hairs on a nettle possibly hurt? Those delicate trichomes act as hypodermic needles, injecting venom under the skin when you brush against them. Urticaria, the medical term for intense, painful hives, gets its name from the Latin word for nettle,
urtica.

Although any number of painful plants are referred to as nettles, true nettles come from the family Urticaceae. They are mostly weedy perennials that spread by underground rhizomes, and they make themselves at home throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa. A variety of compounds deliver the nettle’s sting, including a muscle toxin called
tartaric acid, as well as oxalic acid, which is found in a number of fruits and vegetables and can irritate the stomach. Formic acid, a component of bee and ant stings, is also present in nettles at low levels.

Fortunately, there’s a folk remedy for nettle stings: nettle juice. That’s right, the sap from the crushed leaves is believed to counteract the acidity of the sting. Dock, a weed that often grows near nettles, may also soothe a nettle sting—and dock leaves are blissfully free of sharp, poisonous spines. There’s little evidence about the effectiveness of these remedies, but experts agree that the task of looking for a dock leaf might take one’s mind off the pain.

The news on nettles is not all bad: young nettle shoots, when boiled to remove the hairs, are a nutritious spring delicacy, and sufferers of rheumatism have tried deliberately stinging themselves with nettles to relieve their joint pain. There is even a name for this deliberate flogging of oneself with nettles: uritication.

The best-known nettle, growing widely throughout the United States and northern Europe wherever it can find moist soils. A herbaceous perennial, it reaches about three feet in height in summer and dies back to the ground in winter.

An annual, low-growing herb considered by some to be the most painful plant in the United States. Also called lesser nettle or burning nettle. Grows in most of Europe and North America.

One of New Zealand’s most painful plants. Causes rashes, blisters, and intense stings lasting several days. There have been reports that full-body contact with the plant has killed dogs and horses, perhaps from the systemic allergic reaction of anaphylactic shock.

Found in South America from Mexico to Brazil. Ethnobotanists have reported that the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon use the stinging leaves to punish their children when they misbehave.

Grows in tropical and subtropical regions of Asia and Australia. Unlike most nettles, the sting can last for weeks or months and it can cause breathing trouble. Old, dry branches that have been sitting around for several decades can still do harm.

STRYCHNOS NUX-VOMICA

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream was a nineteenth-century serial killer who favored strychnine, which comes from the seed of a fifty-foot-tall tree. Those seeds work well for killing rodents and other household pests—strychnine is also used as rat poison—and Cream discovered that it was effective on tiresome spouses and lovers, too.

He got his start in Canada, where he was forced to marry a woman at gunpoint after she became pregnant. He ran off just after the wedding but later returned to Canada. Shortly after he returned, she died mysteriously. He had an affair in medical school that also ended with the death of the young woman.

Later he set up a practice in Chicago. While he was there, a man died of strychnine poisoning, and the man’s wife ratted out Dr. Cream for providing the poison rather than serve time herself.

But that didn’t stop him. Ten years later, Cream was out of jail and offering medical services to unfortunate young women in London whose deaths were often blamed on other ailments such as
alcoholism. But the true cause of death was the powdered strychnine seed he slipped in their drink. Dr. Cream’s pride in his work led him to brag about his accomplishments, and that led to his arrest. By the age of forty-two, he was tried, convicted, and hanged.

Strychnine takes control of the nervous system, flicking on a switch that leads to a flood of painful, unstoppable signals. With nothing to stop the nervous system from firing, every muscle in the body goes into violent spasm, the back arches, breathing becomes impossible, and the victim dies of respiratory failure or sheer exhaustion. Symptoms start within half an hour and death comes a few agonizing hours later. By the end the face of the deceased is fixed in a rigid, terror-stricken grin.

It is rumored to be the sort of poison one could develop a gradual tolerance for. The Greek king Mithridates is believed to have slowly built up a resistance to an entire bouquet of poisons, including strychnine, so that he could survive a sneak attack from an enemy. He tested his potions on prisoners before swallowing them himself; from this legend A. E. Housman wrote these lines: