Wicked Plants (15 page)

Opium creates a feeling of euphoria but also depresses the respiratory system and can lead to coma and death. It interferes with endorphin receptors in the brain, making it difficult for addicts to make use of the brain’s natural painkillers. This is one of the reasons why withdrawal from heroin is so difficult. Addicts who are thrown into jail and forced to go cold turkey will sometimes throw themselves against the bars of their cell for a distraction from the intense muscle pain. Even tea made from the seeds and seed heads can be dangerous because the level of morphine varies widely from plant to plant: in 2003 a seventeen-year-old Californian died from an overdose of “natural” poppy tea.

It would take an annual harvest of at least ten thousand poppy plants to supply the typical heroin user for a year, but there are no exceptions under the law for gardeners who want to grow the flowers. In the mid-1990s, the DEA asked seed companies to stop selling the seed in their catalogs voluntarily, fearing that the availability of the seeds could contribute to domestic heroin production. Most seed companies ignored the request, and the flower continues to be popular among gardeners. The seeds used in baked goods are harmless in small quantities, but eating a couple of poppy seed muffins could cause a positive result on a drug test.

Meet the Relatives
Other poppies include the Oriental poppy,
Papaver orientale;
the Shirley poppy or Flanders field poppy,
P. rhoeas;
and the Iceland poppy,
P. nudicaule.
The orange California poppy is not related; this native wildflower is
Eschscholzia californica.

On July 2, 1881, Charles Julius Guiteau shot President James Garfield. His aim was not quite good enough to kill the president; Garfield lived for eleven weeks as doctors probed his internal organs with unsterilized instruments, searching for the bullet that was actually lodged near his spine. Guiteau tried to use this bit of medical malpractice in his bizarre, theatrical trial, claiming, “The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him.” Nonetheless, he was sentenced to die by hanging.

On the morning of his execution, his sister brought him a bouquet of flowers. Prison officials intercepted the bouquet and later discovered that there was enough arsenic tucked between the petals to kill several men. Although the sister. denied having poisoned
her brother’s bouquet, it was well known that Guiteau feared the hangman’s noose and would have preferred to die some other way.

Was the arsenic necessary? With a little planning, Guiteau’s sister could have put together a bouquet of flowers that would do quite a bit of damage all by themselves.

Favored by flower lovers for their tall spires of pink, blue, lavender, or white blossoms and their fine, lacy foliage. The plants contain a poison similar to that found in a relative, aconite. The amount of toxins vary according to the species and the age of the plant, but a lethal dose would not be out of the question if someone ate enough of it.

A spring-flowering plant with a heavenly fragrance, it contains a few different cardiac glycosides and can cause headache, nausea, cardiac symptoms, and even heart failure at high doses. The red berries the plant produces after it blooms are also toxic.

A lovely, old-fashioned flower named for the shape of its blossoms, which resemble a heart with a drop of blood suspended from it. Bleeding hearts contain toxic alkaloids that could cause nausea, seizures, and respiratory problems.

Resembles a normal pea vine, except that its flowers are larger, more colorful, and incredibly fragrant. All parts are mildly poisonous, but the young shoots and seedpods contain poisonous amino acids called lathyrogens. Sweet pea is one of a number of pea and vetch plants in the genus
Lathyrus
that can cause lathyrism, which brings on paralysis, weakness, and tremors.

Produces a highly irritating sap hazardous to horticultural workers. Touching the bulbs can irritate the skin, and workers in Holland’s bulb industry know that even the dry dust produced by the bulbs may bring on respiratory problems. A syndrome called tulip finger is an occupational hazard for florists who handle the plants all day. They can experience painful swelling, red rashes, and cracks in the skin.

Tulip bulbs have been mistaken for onions and eaten during times of famine in Holland—a bad idea since a dinner of tulip bulbs would bring on vomiting, breathing problems, and severe weakness.

Also well known in the flower industry for causing “hyacinth itch” if the bulbs are handled with bare hands. Its sap can also irritate the skin.

Brings on the same kind of dermatitis as tulips and hyacinths. Cross-sensitivity can develop among these different varieties of flowers, making for a potent combination of painful skin problems.

Blossoms have been used in teas and for medicinal purposes, but the plants can cause a severe allergic reaction. Some people may develop skin rashes, swollen eyes, and other symptoms. Certain species are used to produce pyrethrum, an organic insecticide.

Aconite, or monkshood, is a popular garden flower that produces spires of blue or white blossoms similar to those of larkspur and delphinium. While they are beautiful in a bouquet, the poison contained in the plant is so deadly that it can paralyze the nerves and even kill. Florists should avoid handling the stems with their bare hands; even skin contact can bring on numbness and cardiac problems.

CAESALPINIA PULCHERRIMA
(
SYN
. POINCIANA UICHERRIMA)

The peacock flower plays a tragic role in the history of the slave trade. Tins beautiful tropical shrub, with its fine, lacy leaves and brilliant orange flowers that are irresistible to humming-birds, produces a seedpod whose poison was well known to women of the West Indies.

Medical literature of the eighteenth century describes the attempts of slave women to end their pregnancies so that their children would not contribute to the wealth of a slave owner. This rebellion took many forms: some women sought medicine from the plantation doctor in the hopes that it would cause a miscarriage, but others relied on plants like the peacock flower. It was believed to help bring on menstruation, or “bring down the flowers,” as European doctors sometimes called it.

In 1705 botanical explorer Maria Sibylla Merian first described the ways in which West Indian slaves would use the plant as a form of resistance against their owners: “The Indians, who are not treated well by their Dutch masters, use the
seeds [of this plant] to abort their children, so that their children will not become slaves like they are. The black slaves from Guinea and Angola have demanded to be well-treated, threatening to refuse to have children. In fact, they sometimes take their own lives because they are treated so badly, and because they believe they will be born again, free and living in their own land. They told me this themselves.”

The peacock flower became a popular ornamental shrub among plant collectors in Europe. It flourishes throughout the southern United States, especially in Florida, Arizona, and California. In areas with mild winters, it can grow to twenty feet tall. The bark is covered with sharp prickles that make it difficult to handle. The red, yellow, or orange flowers bloom all summer, giving way in the fall to flat brown pods that contain the poisonous seeds.

The women of the West Indies hid their secret well: throughout its history as an ornamental shrub, very little has been mentioned in the botanical literature about the role it played in the lives of desperate slave women struggling against the terrible situation they found themselves in.

Meet the Relatives     Caesalpinia
includes about seventy species of tropical shrubs and small trees.
C. gilliesii
, also called bird of paradise shrub, is a popular ornamental in the Southwest. The tannin in its seeds makes it toxic, but most people recover from the poison’s severe gastrointestinal effects after twenty-four hours.

LOPHOPHORE WILLIAMSII)

When Spanish missionaries arrived in the New World, they observed the ritual use of the peyote cactus (mescaline) by Native Americans and called it witchcraft. Conquistadores and colonists banned it and drove its use underground. Ironically, when white settlers objected to peyote use, it was usually expressed in terms of the harm it might inflict on Native Americans. This belief continued into the twentieth century. In 1923, the
New York Times
quoted one antipeyote crusader as saying that those who use peyote may be beyond help: “The alcoholic subject may by careful treatment escape physical and mental weakness, but the mescal[ine] fiend travels to absolute incompetency.”