Wicked Plants (9 page)

In addition to the mosquito population, the dirty, brackish drinking water, and the lack of wild game or any other reliable food source, the island was overrun with a seductively beautiful weed. Some made the terrible mistake of trying to add this weed—datura—to their diet. Their gruesome deaths, which were probably marked by delusions, convulsions, and respiratory failure, were not forgotten by the survivors or their children. Some seventy years later, British soldiers arrived to quell one of the first uprisings at the fledgling colony, and the settlers remembered the toxic plant and slipped datura leaves into the soldiers’ food.

The British soldiers did not die, but they did go crazy for eleven days, temporarily giving the colonists the upper hand.
According to an early historian, “One would blow up a feather in the air; another would dart straws at it with much fury; and another, stark naked, was sitting up in a corner like a monkey, grinning and making mows [grimaces] at them; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his companions.”

It took more than datura to overthrow British rule, but the plant’s role earned it the nickname Jamestown weed, and over the centuries that became Jimson weed. The plant, which flourishes throughout most of North America and is common in the Southwest, grows to two or three feet tall and produces striking six-inch-long, white or purple trumpet-shaped flowers that close at night. A datura’s fruit is about the size of a small egg, pale green, and covered in thorns. In fall, the fruits release a generous handful of highly toxic seeds.

The effects of datura poisoning are similar to those of
Atropa belladona
. All parts of the plant contain tropane alkaloids that cause hallucinations and seizures, but those alkaloids are especially concentrated in the seeds. The levels vary greatly over time and in different parts of the plant, making experimentation dangerous. One recreational user wrote that “the scariest part of this trip was that I stopped breathing automatically and had to make myself breathe with my diaphragm. These conditions lasted all night.”

A woman in Canada added datura seeds to hamburger patties, thinking they were a seasoning. (The seedpods had been drying above the stove for next year’s garden.) She was in a coma for twenty-four hours before she recovered enough to tell the doctors what she had done. She and her husband spent three days in the hospital.

Teenagers (and adults behaving like teenagers) have made a tea of the leaves in search of a cheap high, but drinking such a tea could be a deadly mistake. Frightening and disturbing hallucinations can come on slowly and last for days. Other common side effects include fevers high enough to kill brain cells and a failure of the autonomic nervous system, which regulates the heartbeat and respiration, leading to coma and death.

Meet the Relatives
Members of the nightshade family, all daturas are poisonous. The dramatic bluish purple moonflower,
Datura inoxia
, flourishes throughout the Southwest. Closely related brugmansia is a popular garden specimen.

Ever noticed how criminal tendencies tend to run in the family? A few plant families seem to have more than their fair share of black sheep. The characteristics that set them apart—stinging hairs or milky sap or lacy foliage—also give them away.

Nightshades represent some of the best and worst plants humans have ever encountered. Potatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes are among the more respectable members of this family. However, when European settlers first encountered tomatoes in the New World, they believed them to be poisonous like the other nightshades they knew. Tomatoes, after all, bear a familial resemblance to their cousin, deadly nightshade, and other dangerous nefarious relatives like the narcotic mandrake, the evil weed tobacco, and the poisonous and intoxicating henbane, belladonna, and datura.

Nightshades have long been viewed with suspicion and distrust. John Smith, a seventeenth-century philosopher, compared the “congealing vapour that ariseth from sin and vice” to the evil powers of “that venemous deadly nightshade, which drives its cold poison into the understandings of men.” In fact, many nightshades contain tropane alkaloids that cause hallucinations, seizures, and deadly comas.

The petunia is also a nightshade; in fact, knowing what a petunia flower looks like might just provide a clue for recognizing some other members of this family. Otherwise, an unfamiliar plant that produces small, round fruit and has the general growth habit of a tomato or eggplant should be viewed with some caution.

The trees and shrubs in this family typically produce a drupe, a kind of fruit in which the seed is surrounded by a hard pit, which is in turn surrounded by sweet, juicy flesh. (Mangoes are one example, as are the unrelated stone fruits like peaches and cherries.) But what the cashew family does best is produce a toxic resin that brings on painful and long-lasting rashes. And don’t light a member of the cashew family on fire—it will produce a noxious smoke that burns the lungs.

Poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumac are perhaps the most feared members of this family. Mango and cashew trees also produce the irritating resin known as urishol, as does the lacquer tree. In fact, people who are highly sensitive to poison ivy or one of its cousins may experience a cross-sensitivity to mango rind or a lacquer-covered box. Other relatives include the pistachio tree, the ginkgo tree, the poison-wood tree, and the pepper tree.

These small and often harmless-looking plants are best known for that unique anatomical feature, urticating hairs. The fine hairs may look as innocent as peach fuzz, but they often contain a minute dose of poison that is released when the hairs get under the skin. The medical term for painful, itchy hives, urticaria, gets its name from the skin inflammation brought on by stinging nettles.

Most nettles are low-growing plants that superficially resemble herbs like mint or basil, with toothed edges. The Australian stinging tree, widely considered the world’s most painful plant, is a member of the nettle family, but the best-known member of this family is the stinging nettle,
Urtica dioica
. The hairs are so fine that people unfamiliar with the plant might not even notice them. In addition to the stinging hairs, nettles can also be identified by the small clusters of flowers that emerge from the joint where the leaf connects to the stem. However, the best advice for avoiding the nettle family is to resist the temptation to stroke an unfamiliar fuzzy or hairy leaf.

The highly irritating, milky sap produced by most members of the spurge family sets it apart. Gardeners may recognize the more common
euphorbias that are popular in Mediterranean gardens, but other members of this family are not as obviously related: poinsettia, pencil cactus, Texas bull nettle, castor bean, rubber tree, sandbox tree,
mala mujer
, milky mangrove, and manchineel are all spurges. Many of these can burn and scar the skin, but some, like castor bean, also contain powerful poisons that can kill if ingested. At the very least, plants that produce a milky sap should be handled with care, as they may burn skin and eyes. Some spurges can be identified by their colorful bracts; for example, consider the flowers of euphorbias or poinsettias.

This family conceals some notorious criminals among its otherwise healthy and beautiful members. Carrots, dill, fennel, parsley, anise, lovage, chervil, parsnips, caraway, coriander, angelica, and celery are all plants that a good chef couldn’t live without, but even they require some caution: many, including celery, dill, parsley, and parsnips are phototoxic, meaning that skin contact, combined with sun exposure, can cause a rash. One garden flower, bishop’s weed (
Ammi majus
), is so phototoxic that exposure to the seeds can permanently darken skin.

But the real danger is posed by relatives like water hemlock, poison hemlock, giant hogweed, and cow parsnip. These wild plants contain neurotoxins and skin irritants, but they so closely resemble their edible cousins that tragic mistakes have been made by hikers and cooks.

Identifying plants in the carrot family is fairly easy. Queen Anne’s lace is a typical example; like most members of the family, it produces fine, lacy foliage and flat-topped clusters of flowers called umbels, as well as a carrot-shaped root.

CATHA EDULIS

Khat played a small but pivotal role in the 1993 battle of Mogadishu in which two American Black Hawk helicopters were shot down. Gun-toting Somalian men stuffed khat leaves into their cheeks and raced around Mogadishu with a jittery high that lasted until late into the night, contributing to the violence and the deaths of American soldiers trapped at the crash site.

Author Mark Bowden found an interesting route into Somalia when he was researching his book
Black Hawk Down:
he flew on a khat plane. Because the leaves must be consumed fresh, Bowden had to pay for the amount of khat he was displacing that day. “What they did was offload two hundred pounds of khat so I could sit on the plane,” he said in an interview. “I paid for myself as if I were khat to get into the country.”

The leaves deliver a clear-headed euphoria that lasts for hours. In Yemen and Somalia up to three-quarters of adult men use the drug, stuffing a few leaves between their cheek and gum, in much the same way that coca is used in Latin America. And like coca,
the khat plant has fueled wars between those who claim it is a benign cultural ritual that has been practiced for centuries and those who see it as a public health menace.

When a khat plane lands in Somalia, its cargo is unloaded and distributed in a matter of hours. Men lounge about in a blissed-out state, chewing their khat, tending to neither their families nor their jobs. Long-term use leads to aggression, delusions, paranoia, and psychosis. But the typical khat user is not deterred by these alarming symptoms. As one man put it, “When I chew it, I feel like my problems disappear. Khat is my brother. It takes care of all things.” Another man said, “You open up like a flower when you chew.”