It’s not every book that has the number for the poison control center in its introduction. But that’s just the first of the many cautionary points in Amy Stewart’s “Wicked Plants” – a whodunit of killers, sadists, drug dealers and other villains of the botanical world.
Framed through history, science and legend, Stewart presents bios of bloodthirsty botany. It’s educational and entertaining. And you just might not look at plants in the same way again.
The New York Times best-selling author will be talking about those villainous plants and the subjects of her follow-up book, “Wicked Bugs,” Saturday at Tacoma Community College.
In a recent phone interview from her home in Eureka, Calif., Stewart reflected on what drew her to wicked plants and bugs and how she’s come to respect them. Though she urges caution for people with small children or pets that like to nibble she says, “We don’t need to live in fear of poisonous plants.”
Q: What’s more dangerous: a walk in the woods or on a city street?
A: Well, it all depends on what you’re going to put in your mouth. The thing about plants is that they can’t reach out and grab us. These are self-inflicted injuries. People are far too willing to take an unknown plant and put it their mouths.
Q: What drew you to wicked plants?
A: There is this dark side to horticulture that we really don’t talk about. I really wanted to have fun with it. These are plants that were used to start wars and implicate people in crimes. It’s a carefully selected collection of stories of when people have run afoul of these plants.
Q: What evil plants do you grow at home?
A: You can’t just walk into a garden center and say, “I’d like three mandrakes, please.” (After much searching) I started planting all these poisonous plants. Instead of plant markers I made tombstones. They didn’t say the name of the plant but what they caused. They say “madness,” “asphyxiation,” “lung cancer” – in the case of tobacco.
Q: What’s the most wicked plant out there?
A: Tobacco. Close to 100 million people have been killed since I last checked. The plant itself is very poisonous. It manufactures poison (nicotine) for the sole purpose of us leaving it alone. And it was the cultivation of tobacco that drove the need for the early slave trade. The plant is at the center of a lot nasty historical events, and pain and suffering.
Q: What bulb sickened the Lewis and Clark party?
A: It turns out they may have been poisoned by this bulb called death camas which looks similar to blue camas – which is edible and consumed by native peoples.
Q: What bug would you least like to meet?
A: Most of them aren’t going to come after you no matter what. (But) something like the Brazilian Wandering Spider is a large and fearsome creature. It’s actually aggressive. If you try to whack it with a broom it might climb up the broom after you.
Q: What about us West Coasters? What should we be on the lookout for?
A: Black widows – very painful bite, but it’s probably not going to kill you. Everybody gets worked up about bedbugs when hundreds of millions (worldwide) get mosquito-borne diseases. The solutions (for mosquito and disease control) are easy and inexpensive, but we choose not to do them.
Q: I can’t print in a family newspaper the mating habits of our native banana slugs that you describe in “Wicked Bugs.”
A: I could not resist some of the bizarre mating rituals. Some you can describe. (For instance) I didn’t know the blinking patterns of fireflies were specific to species. There’s even a chapter on zombies – about bugs that take over other bugs.
Q: When I was traveling in West Africa several years ago, the villagers I was staying with advised me not to wear freshly laundered clothing. What were they afraid of?
A: The tumbu fly. (The fly lays eggs on wet clothing which then migrates into human skin.) These are the kinds of things that are a way of life in these parts of the world.
Q: That would explain the worm I found growing in my arm.
A: Ooo (excited). You got one!
Q: Your bug book is kind of unnerving, but bugs seem to treat each other much worse than they do us.
A: Exactly. They live these short desperate lives just trying to reproduce. I wouldn’t want to be a bug. They’re mostly trying to defend themselves (when they attack humans). Or they are just participating in a life cycle, like parasites. It’s difficult for people to think about them, but I love them.
LOCAL VILLANS
A number of plants mentioned in Stewart’s book are cultivated locally such as daphne and hellebore (“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go pull these things out of your yard – it just means you shouldn’t eat them for breakfast,” she said.) The list below is a select group of local rogues. Their crimes range from poor hygiene to murder.
Common name: Stinging Nettle
Latin name: Urticaeae
Description: A native herb that resembles mint or basil.
Wicked nature: Fine hairs contain a trio of painful poisons (tartaric acid, oxalic acid and formic acid) that are injected into a victims’ skin. On the plus side, the cooked spring shoots are a nutritious delicacy and the dried leaves are used in teas.
Common name: Ragweed
Latin name: Ambrosia
Description: An erect annual with dissected leaves and inconspicuous flowers.
Wicked nature: A single plant can produce a billion grains of pollen during one season. Seventy-five percent of all allergy sufferers are sensitive to ragweed.
Common name: Foxglove
Latin name: Digitalis
Description: Tall stems with tubular flowers in white, pink and purple. Though not native to Washington the plant fills up fields, particularly recently logged areas, with breathtaking swaths of flowers.
Wicked nature: It contains a substance that can literary stop your heart.
Common name: Water hemlock
Latin name: Cicuta
Description: A European native with delicate white flowers and foliage that look like carrot leaves. The white root also has a carrot-like appearance.
Wicked nature: It’s Pierce and Thurston counties’ second-most prevalent noxious weed (behind tansy ragwort). A cousin species, Poison Hemlock, killed Greek philosopher Socrates. Water hemlock is suspected in last year’s death of a Tacoma woman. One bite can cause seizures, three can bring death.
Common name: Skunk cabbage
Latin name: Symplocarpus foetidus
Description: Common to wetlands, this native plant with big glossy green leaves blooms with a large calla lily-like yellow flower in early spring.
Wicked nature: This plant not only has the ability to produce heat, but it lives up to its name with a fetid stink.
Common name: Devil’s Club
Latin name: Oplopanax horridus
Description: Also known as Devil’s Walking Stick, this large native shrub has palmate leaves on erect, woody stems covered in brittle spines.
Wicked nature: The painful spines will easily break off and embed themselves in the hands of unsuspecting forest explorers.
Craig Sailor: 253-597-8541 craig.sailor@thenewstribune.com
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