A joint meeting of the History and Horticultural Societies of Wickhambrook was held in October with a subject that included plenty of history and lots of gardening. Michael Brown’s talk was subtitled ‘Poisonous Plants – Magic, Myth and Passion’ and we were treated to a plant by plant analysis with historical anecdotes which was both fascinating and entertaining.
Many plants have beneficial properties but excess use can be dangerous and here are a few of the many things we learned, with lots of laughter along the way.
Mandrake – is supposed to scream when you pull it out of the ground and if you hear it you will die. However, it takes three years to mature and is expensive to process so the myth of its danger was allowed to spread.
Deadly nightshade – six berries can kill a child, but women used it to make their eyes look bigger and brighter.
Monkshood – also known as aconite, was used by a jealous woman to kill her lover in The Curry Murder in 2009
Henbane – used by Dr Crippen to kill his wife Cora so that he could run off with his lover.
Opium Poppy – Just like the ones we see in our fields and gardens but the medicinal ones grown in Afghanistan have much larger heads
Foxglove – very lethal, but excellent for heart problems. It took Dr Wittering three year to test its properties
Wormwood – used to make absinthe, but eventually declared unfit for human consumption .
There were many more examples of plants that many of us grow in our gardens without appreciating their properties so we will now treat what we grow with greater respect.
Dorothy Anderson