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Monkshood / Wolfsbane

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Monkshood plant USUAL WARNING: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME, OR ANYWHERE ELSE.  THESE ARE NOT RECREATIONAL DRUGS, THESE ARE TOXIC PLANTS FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY AND NEED TO BE TREATED WITH THE UTMOST REPECT.   This month we are returning to our core theme of toxic plants.  Regular readers will remember that that the purpose of this blog is to explore the medicinal uses of certain toxic herbs, sometimes known as “witches’ herbs”, with particular reference to their potential use as anaesthetics, in the event that chemically based anaesthetics become unavailable or in short supply - as was the case, for example, during World Wars 1 and 2 when Britain was subject to a German U-boat blockade.    So today we are looking at monkshood, also known as aconite or wolfsbane, latin name Aconitum napellus .  The plant is so named because the flowers look a little like a medieval monk’s hood, and because extracts of the plant were used to prepare poisoned arrows for hunting wild animals. Monkshood flower Mo
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UK General Election Special

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As you may know, the British Prime Minister recently announced that a General Election would be held in the UK on 4 July. Campaigning here is ramping up, so I am going to depart from our usual gardening theme this month and look at some of the policies (or lack of them) up for debate (or not). For non-UK readers, here is a brief summary of UK politics. For over 100 years, UK governments have been formed by either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. The current government is Conservative; the predicted result of the upcoming election is a swing to Labour. The Conservative Party is right-leaning and is somewhat comparable to the US Republicans; the Labour Party is left-leaning and is somewhat comparable to the US Democrats. There are several minority parties who have no realistic prospect of winning a majority or forming a government; however, they may hold the balance of power in a “hung Parliament” where no party has an overall majority. Minority parties contesting this el
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Book review: The Old Vegetable Neurotics, Hemlock, Opium, Belladonna and Henbane (1869)

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Book cover, "The Old Vegetable Neurotics" It may seem odd to be reviewing a book which is over 150 years old, but let me explain the background to it.   For the last few years I have been trying to recreate the plant based anaesthetics used in ancient Greek and Roman times, medieval Europe, and more recently in World Wars 1 and 2, for a thought experiment: what would we do for anaesthetics if civilisation collapsed and global supply chains and the pharmaceutical industry no longer functioned? Recipes for making these anaesthetics must have existed in times past, but it is difficult to find them today, either because they have disintegrated through passage of time, or they were never written down because the practitioners who used them were illiterate, or they are written in medieval English or Latin and are hard to understand.   Opium poppies growing on Douglas Promenade, Isle of Man I am hoping that an ongoing research project, Curious Cures in Cambridge Libraries   may prov
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Popcorn

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Strawberry Popcorn drying This month we are taking a break from our core topic of toxic plants and looking at the cradle-to-grave life cycle of a plant which is very much non-toxic and edible, namely popcorn, better known as flint corn.  I grew this as a fun plant to try to get my teenage son interested in food production (he loves popcorn).  Not much success getting my son interested so far, but our manic dog Maple shows great enthusiasm for gardening.  When I dig, she digs (although not always in the right place).  When I pull things up, she pulls things up.  When I get my gardening tools out, she thinks they are for her and runs off with them.    I just need to focus her enthusiasm a bit better.   Maple helping with the gardening But seriously, knowing how to produce food will become increasingly important in the years to come, because it’s my belief - which I realise is still only shared by a minority of people, and no politicians - that humanity is in overshoot, and the 8 billion
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