Botanical Curses and Poisons: The Shadow Lives of Plants

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That is not to say that I'm intending to grow poisonous plants, but it's always good to know what to avoid. Yet many of their magical observations are surprisingly insightful, often for reasons that wouldn’t become clear until centuries later when science finally caught up enough to explain what people had already noticed. But the facts and stories themselves are so interesting that you can easily read a large portion in one sitting. Her greatest passions are botany, nature, primitive religions, and folklore, which flavor most of her work. Poison has caused some of history's most dramatic deaths--yet a fine line separates healing from killing: the difference lies in the dosage!

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Going from A to Z, she covers everything from apple (think of the poisoned fruit in "Snow White") and the hallucinogenic angel's trumpet to laurel, which emits toxic fumes, to oleander (a deadly ornamental shrub), with each plant beautifully illustrated by the author herself.

But my absolute favorite thing about both of Inkwright’s books is the way they connect what people used to believe about plants with the way those beliefs came to be. I grew to learn which plants could hurt when you fell off your bike into them and even contemplating touching a mushroom was forbidden. The pair of them should be on any witch, herbalist, or plant enthusiast’s shelf – five out of five cats!

REVIEW: Botanical Curses and Poisons: A Fascinating - WWAC REVIEW: Botanical Curses and Poisons: A Fascinating - WWAC

Discover the folklore and history of our most toxic plants through this beautifully produced, gorgeously illustrated compendium. Filled with information as well as stories this novel presents a nice balance into the past of these plants.There’s a lot of interesting cultural context around poison and why it was so much more common in times when less was known about medicine and disease, making it harder to differentiate between intentional poisoning and accidental sickness.