Wicked Plants:
following the trail of botanical bad actors
By Elizabeth Licata
You can meet Amy Stewart and hear her talk about Wicked Plants this month, at Urban Roots Garden Center, on May 27, at 6 p.m. The free event is sponsored by Talking Leaves Bookstore and Urban Roots.
There are two schools of garden writing. The first is instructional and informative. These are the books and magazine/newspaper columns we turn to for the help we need to keep our plots thriving, learn about new plants and techniques, and solve common garden problems. The second is opinionated and expository. These are the writers who entertain us with their witty and outspoken commentary on garden culture, or inspire us with their elegiac musings on the rewards of tilling the soil. And often the two schools are combined (as with the best books of Christopher Lloyd).

Amy Stewart belongs to neither of these schools, though she might be better aligned with the second. Rather, Stewart is a true investigative journalist in the world of gardening. She takes up special subjects—many of which have rarely been written about before—and follows their stories, sifting through a vast amount of research to choose the most interesting, informative, and fascinating facts, anecdotes, and narratives. Such was the case with Flower Confidential, which lays bare the cut flower trade; The Earth Moved, which reveals a secret, totally enthralling universe of earthworms; and now her latest book: Wicked Plants, which gathers every member of the botanical kingdom that has poisoned, smothered, stabbed, burned, intoxicated, or otherwise created mayhem in a world where plants and humans need to co-exist—productively, if possible.

Illustrations by Briony Morrow-Cribs of mala mujer (cnidoscolus angustidens) and mandrake (mandragora officinarum).
Wicked Plants is organized alphabetically by plant. Thematic groupings of plants that have specific effects (plants that create a rash or plants that cause hallucinations) are interspersed between individual entries on such ill-mannered specimens as castor bean, kudzu, datura, jimson weed, opium poppy, and many, many more. All the scientific information, including botanic names, families, habitats, and geographic locations are included in these often-hilarious recountings of the damage each plant has caused throughout history. They shouldn’t be hilarious—there really is a lot of death here—but Stewart very successfully cultivates a carefully factual and somewhat deadpan tone, with little zingers thrown in along the way. Hence, this entertaining passage:

Just a few months ago, a woman in southern California tried to collect on her husband’s life insurance by putting the [oleander] leaves in his food. He went to the hospital with severe gastrointestinal problems, but he survived. As he was recuperating his wife finished the job by offering him Gatorade laced with antifreeze. She is now one of fifteen women on California’s death row, and the only one who attempted murder with a plant.

That really shouldn’t be funny, but it is. And it brings out a central feature of this book. Sure, a lot of these plants are deadly, but most of them are only so because humans needed to mess with them. We bring seeds of invasive plants into alien habitats, where they smother native wildlife and compromise biodiversity. We are obsessed with figuring out which plants can get us high, and how. We eat berries on a woodland walk with zero knowledge of their potentially harmful properties, and we’ll even harness the power of plants for murder if the impulse is strong enough.

It’s not really about the plants. It’s about us. And that’s why Stewart’s references to “vegetable wickedness,” the “devious” coyotillo berry, and “bad boy” hemlock are so amusing and effective. Sure, there are a few plants in the book that will harm you if you merely brush up against them, but most of these will require a human-instigated chain reaction to do their deadly work. Indeed, the deadliest of all the plants she writes about—nicotiana (tobacco), which has killed over ninety million people—wouldn’t be if we had just left it alone, instead of figuring out how to smoke it, snort it, chew it, and grow it in mass quantity. So—is it the plant’s fault? You be the judge. And is Amy Stewart a garden writer or a talented literary journalist who’s chosen to write about the botanical world? The answer to that really doesn’t matter, as long as she continues to produce books as interesting and entertaining as this one.

Elizabeth Licata is editor of Buffalo Spree. She also rants with Amy Stewart, Susan Harris, and Michele Owens at the group blog gardenrant.com.
A garden to die for at the BBG

After reading about the havoc certain plants can wreak, including prison, illness, and death, you have to wonder why so many people grow the specimens listed in Amy Stewart’s book. One reason is quite simple: because they are so beautiful.

If you really want to see how gorgeous evil plants can be, consider taking a trip downstate to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, which is installing many of the wicked plants in its gardens this summer. They’re calling this “A Garden to Die For: Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden.”

The plants are arranged according to habitat or theme, and appear throughout the gardens. For example, the lily pool terrace features datura (Jimson weed), nicotiana (tobacco), ricinus (castor bean), and colocasia (elephant ear). And there is also a group arrangement of “Horrific Houseplants” in the BBG’s tropical terrace that includes spathiphyllum (peace lily), philodendron rugosum (naugahyde philodendrum), and poinsettia. That’s right: all these common houseplants are poisonous. Who knew? Another cool group is Itchy and Scratchy, which includes toxicodendron vernicifluum (varnish tree), toxicondendron radicans (poison ivy), and mangifera indica (mango); these are in various locations throughout the gardens. In the Shakespeare Garden, the botanists have included “paradoxical plants,” which can be beneficial or harmful, depending on how they are used: digitalis (foxglove), aconiotum (monkshood), taxus (English yew), and Artemesia absinthium (wormwood).

The Gardens also plans to display some of Wicked Plants’ wonderful illustrations (the ones by Briony Morrow-Cribbs) and has a workshop planned with her on May 31, which is also the day of the Stewart book signing in Brooklyn. Check bbg.org for complete information on all the Brooklyn Botanic Garden events.

Don’t feel like traveling to Brooklyn or haven’t the time? Buffalo’s own Botanical Gardens (buffalogardens.com) features a magnificent display of ricinus every summer and its glasshouses are always filled with many nasty characters. Though you may never have realized that before.


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