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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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Belladonna

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Small Belladonna plant This month we are returning to our core theme of toxic plants and we will be discussing one toxic plant in particular: Atropa belladonna , also known as Deadly Nightshade.   But first the usual legal warning:   THIS BLOG IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY.   DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.   ANY OF IT.   EVER. Belladonna has a long history of use by humans both in medicine and in warfare.   It was used by the ancient Greeks to induce drowsiness and numbness before surgery.   It was used in larger doses by the ancient Romans as a biological weapon, for example on arrowheads, or for poisoning the enemy’s water supply.   The Roman emperors Claudius and Augustus are reputed to have been poisoned by it. Many toxic plants are therapeutic in small doses but toxic or fatal in large doses.   The medieval herbalists and “cunning folk” who used the plant therapeutically probably trod a fine line between being called healers if things went well, but poisoners if they didn’t.   Many o
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