The Book of the Bizarre: Freaky Facts and Strange Stories (14 page)

Daphnomancy
is the word for divination through bay leaves. The word pays homage to Daphne, a nymph from ancient Greek myths who was turned into the first bay laurel tree when fleeing Apollo's flirtatious advances.

The eggplant is a member of the thistle family.

Throughout the 1500s to the 1700s, tobacco was prescribed as medicine for a variety of complaints, including headaches, toothaches, arthritis, and bad breath.

HEROIC HERBAL

Yarrow,
Alchillea millefolium
, takes its Latin name from Achilles, the invincible Greek warrior who had but one vulnerable spot—his heel. When his heel was sliced, yarrow was used to assuage the bleeding. Even today, one of the most well-known medicinal uses for yarrow is to staunch bleeding. The shape of the yarrow's leaves also form tiny arrows, which look like Achilles's bow
and arrow. Yarrow was also used as the original sticks in the Chinese oracle, the I-Ching.

VAMPIRE LILY (
DRACUNCULUS VULGARIS
)

No freakish garden is complete without the beloved vampire lily,
Dracunculus vulgaris
. Also called the dragon arum, it belongs to the
Araceae
family. Sporting an incredible, deep red flower with a ruffled edge and a long black or deep purple spadix, the vampire lily brings to mind the gown you wished you had for last Halloween's costume contest. Even the stems are gothic looking; they are a mottled green and red, as if they have been splattered with blood. One of the creepiest aspects of this plant, and no doubt what brought on the fantastically vampiric associations, is the fact that it emits a smell like that of rotting flesh. This scent attracts the flies and carrion beetles that pollinate it. The flower's deceptive beauty lures human garden visitors into its realm, enticing them to put their noses into the blood red curls of the blossom and inhale deeply, only to be horrified and repelled by the flower's sweet and sickening smell of death.

VOODOO LILY (
SAUROMATUM GUTTATUM
)

What could be more bewitching than a plant with such a ghoulish name? The voodoo lily,
Sauromatum guttatum
, sometimes identified as
S. venosum
, derives its name from its speckled, bloody red flower foul, corpselike smell. Adapted to attract flies and beetles as its pollinators, the voodoo lily's flower forms with a tall central spike, or spadix, surrounded by the spathe. For the voodoo lily, the spadix is the richest of reds, and the spathe is a vibrant red spotted with deep burgundy. Especially enchanting even when not in bloom, the voodoo lily has speckled leaf spikes that appear after the single flower has come and gone, shooting up and branching out to look like miniature gothic tropical trees, green and smattered with blood red spots at the base. The voodoo lily is bizarre, enchanting, and gorgeously ghastly.

THE CORPSE FLOWER (
AMORPHOPHALLUS TITANUM
)