Book Review: Wicked Plants

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Flipping through a book on plant pests and diseases is enough to give most gardeners the creeps, but how many of them are aware of the other deadly things that go bump in the garden at night – the plants?

I’ve wanted to read ‘Wicked Plants’ by Amy Stewart ever since I saw her extremely clever video trailer, embedded above, and I finally got my hands on a copy at the end of last year. It thus became the first volume on my 2010 book list.

It’s a fascinating read for anyone interested in useful plants (although I’m not suggesting any readers are intent on poisoning their relatives!) or botany in general. It is set out as though it were an old book – the pages are mottled by ‘age’ and the illustrations are all lovely line drawings and etchings.

Amy’s definition of ‘wicked’ is quite broad – not all of the plants are poisonous. Although she starts with plants used to produce arrow poisons, she moves on to intoxicating and narcotic plants, invasive weeds and carnivorous plants, and those that enslave animals (and humans) to spread their seeds through various means. There’s a brief section at the end listing poison gardens throughout the world that are open to visitors (the most famous being Alnwick, which I hope to visit later this year).

If you’re a kitchen gardener then you probably don’t know that early American settlers suffered from a disease called pellagra – caused by a niacin deficieny when their diet consisted almost entirely of corn (Zea mays). The native Americans knew to prepare their corn with slaked lime or calcium hydroxide to render the niacin into an absorbable form. You probably do know that the leaves of rhubarb are poisonous, although they’re perfectly safe to add to compost heaps.

Absinthe, once the popular tipple of Bohemian Paris, is flavoured with wormwood (Artemisia absinthium), which contains a chemical called thujone that can cause seizures and deaths. In Europe, absinthe is legal as long as the thujone level is below a certain threshold; in the US only thujone-free absinthe can be sold. (My friend Jen is growing her own wormwood).

As well as Coca plants and Cannabis species, the book covers the Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum), a plant that I am going to grow, quite legally, in my garden this year as one of my edible flowers – the seeds are used in baked goods. In my climate the plant isn’t going to produce the narcotic substances, but apparently possession of opium poppy plants in the US is illegal. An interesting snippet from the book is that heroin was originally extracted from opium poppies and distributed by the drug company Bayer as a cough syrup in 1898. It wasn’t completely banned until 1923.

Although the book is a fascinating read, it’s a little too detailed to make it a light read. It would make a great coffee table book to dip into, or an interesting reference book for the shelf.

There is a tendency among gardeners and environmentalists to think of natural plants products as safer than their synthetic replacements, but this book reminds us that nature can be nasty as well as nice and that it’s important to know what you’re growing and eating and particularly foraging for when you’re out and about in the countryside. It’s also a good reminder that a well-behaved and useful plant in one climate can become and invasive monster in another habitat, so we should be careful about the non-native plants we introduce into our gardens.

I have a couple of weeks before I’m due to start the next book on my 2010 reading list – The Living Landscape, by Patrick Whitefield, and I hope that in the meantime the snow will melt and I can actually see the landscape!

Posted 13 January 2010, 10:11.   Posted in .
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4 Comments for Book Review: Wicked Plants

  1. Nice review of Stewart’s book, which I like very much. I like your blog too, but the feed from Blotanical never works for some reason. I don’t know if it’s a problem on Stuart’s end or yours, but people can’t visit your posts directly from the new posts feed. If this matters to you, I’m sure there’s a workaround. If not, I’ll get to you by other means, no worries!

    jodi (bloomingwriter) · Jan 13, 03:22 PM

  2. Hi Jodi,

    Thanks for stopping by. Stuart told me about the problem with the Blotanical feed, but not how to fix it and I haven’t managed to get him to answer any of my emails. Maybe I should try again.

    Emma · Jan 13, 03:26 PM

  3. I bet assassins get this book as one of their reading assignments.

    Once on a scout camp there were some Foxgloves nearby our tents and the leader told us it could make our hearts stop beating so we got scared and didn’t go near them.

    Adam · Jan 13, 04:25 PM

  4. I’ll definitely check out Amy’s book – it sounds great, thank you!

    Liza · Jan 14, 03:56 PM

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