Toxic Plants

The evenings are getting longer, the daffodils are out (in the Isle of Man they are anyway, maybe not so much in Alaska) and gardeners’ thoughts start to turn to the year ahead.   There isn’t a lot to photograph or write about right now as most annual seeds haven’t started to germinate and most perennials are coming out of their winter dormancy, but here is an update. The above photograph shows two cold frames and six seed trays on my patio.   I generally overwinter existing plants and start new plants off on my patio before transferring them to the allotment in late spring or early summer, because the allotment is actually quite a plant-hostile place.   It is out in the countryside, it doesn’t benefit from the “heat island” effect of our small town, so the nights are colder and frostier.   It’s more exposed to wind, which I have spoken about before: the strong, cold, salt-laden winds of the Isle of Man are enough to shrivel even the hardiest of plants.   And it...

White bryony flower In this series we are looking at plants which were used as anaesthetics in ancient Roman and medieval times and in wartime Britain.    In my last three posts in March, June and September, I described the progress of several such plants including henbane, jimsonweed/thornapple, white bryony/English mandrake, mediterranean/european mandrake, opium poppy, hemlock/poison hemlock, monkshood/wolfsbane and deadly nightshade.    It’s now December, the garden is dormant so let’s take a look at how one might use these plants in practice. First the usual warning: DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME.   These plants can be highly toxic or even fatal.   The purpose of this series is to imagine what we might have to do if we were thrown into some national emergency, the usual supply lines for the import of pharmaceuticals broke down, and we had to make do with whatever was at hand – just like people did in wartime Britain.   These are not recreational drugs an...

Liz Truss, ex-Prime Minister of UK For anyone who has not been following the horror show of British politics in the last few weeks, here is a brief summary: Liz Truss was elected Prime Minister on 6 September 2022 following the resignation of her predecessor. She appointed Kwasi Kwarteng as her Chancellor, who announced a “mini-budget” on 23 September. This contained £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts including the abolition of the 45% higher rate of income tax and the scrapping of the limit on bankers' bonuses – both unpopular measures which were widely seen as benefiting the rich at the expense of the poor. Following the mini-budget, the financial markets tanked, interest rates rose, sterling fell to its lowest ever level against the US dollar and turmoil in government bond prices led the Bank of England to launch an emergency bond buying programme. This caused house mortgage lenders to withdraw over 40% of their products, with other products repriced upwards. The package was crit...

Foxglove In this series we are looking at plants which were used as anaesthetics in ancient Roman and medieval times and in wartime Britain.   In my last two posts in March and June, I described the progress of several such plants including henbane, jimsonweed / thornapple, white bryony / English mandrake, mediterranean / european mandrake, opium poppy, hemlock / poison hemlock, monkshood / wolfsbane and deadly nightshade.   It’s now September, so let’s take a look at how these plants have got on in the last three months. Henbane seed capsules Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) This annual plant has completed its life cycle by setting seed.   When the seed capsules dry out and turn brown they develop a ring of sharp spikes to deter predators, which makes harvesting the seeds rather painful at times!   The capsule is sealed with a cap; when the plant is ready to release its seeds the cap falls out and the seeds are scattered. These plants only grew to about a foot tall, their...