Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each fact links straight to the page it comes from.

One of the deadliest poisons known to the book was also a fashionable London pudding. Roasting or boiling drives off the poison in Euphorbiaceae, so *Jatropha Manihot* — "than which there scarcely exists a more dangerous poison" — becomes cassava, "the flour of which is often used in London as a luxury for making puddings, than which few are reputed to be more wholesome." Read it in the book →
Russia punished a first tobacco offence with the knout and a second with death. The book lists the sovereigns who tried to stamp smoking out: James I of England wrote against it, the Turkish emperor, the king of Persia and Pope Urban VIII all issued bans, and the Grand Duke of Moscow forbade tobacco's entrance into his territory "under pain of the knout for the first offence, and death for the next." All such prohibitions, Loudon notes, were "as ridiculous as those which attended the introduction of coffee" — and now most sovereigns of Europe draw a large revenue from the leaf. Read it in the book →
A surgeon prescribed monkshood leaves, and when the patient refused them, ate them himself. Linnaeus relayed the case from the Stockholm Acts: "an ignorant surgeon prescribed the leaves, and on the patient refusing to take them, he took them himself and died." The ancients, the book adds, "regarded the Aconite as the most violent of all poisons." Read it in the book →
One shrub's inner bark can be pulled apart into a sheet of lace. In the Thymelaeae the inner bark separates easily, and in *Daphne Lagetta* it "pulls out by the division of the vertical fibres into a sort of network resembling lace." The same family's bark blisters the skin like a vesicatory, and its seeds are "poisonous to man, but birds eat them with impunity." Read it in the book →
Beggars were said to raise fake sores with clematis leaves. Among the caustic virtues of Ranunculaceae: "The foliage of some species of Clématis is supposed to afford the means employed by beggars of producing artificial ulcers," while in Iceland blistering plasters were made from the leaves of *Ranunculus acris*. Read it in the book →
Before pepper reached Europe, cooks ground up Nigella seeds instead. Loudon calls Nigella "celebrated in ancient housewifery for its aromatic seeds, which were used for pepper before that article was discovered" — a spice that lost its job to an import. Read it in the book →
Rubber was the one wholly harmless product of a family of poisons. Caoutchouc is "the most curious of all the products of Euphorbiaceæ": "although the produce of dangerous acrid trees," it possesses "nothing whatever which has been found capable of acting upon the human system in whatever way applied," and is unalterable in air, water or spirits though it softens with heat. Read it in the book →
The tallest tree in the world, as of 1829, had just been found in California. Among the conifers "is now numbered the loftiest tree in the world, a species of pine found by Mr. Douglas in California, which grows 220 feet high, with a circumference of 60 feet." Read it in the book →
Commercial manna, the book insists, would have purged the Israelites rather than fed them. The sweet exudation of the manna-ash is graded and sold — the purer sort "in Cannali" fetching a third more than the manna "in Tazzeti" — but "It seems to have no relation to that which nourished the Hebrews in the desert," being, as Rozier observed, far likelier to have purged than nourished them. Read it in the book →
An orchid arrived from China in a black pot of loam — with a stowaway lily around the rim. The first *Bletia Tankervilliae* to flower in Britain bloomed in Yorkshire in May 1776, sent to Mrs. Hird "by her uncle, Dr. Fothergill, in a black Chinese pot full of stiff loam, in which it had been imported." Small bulbs growing in a neat circle at the pot's edge "afterwards proved to be Amaryllis Aurea." Read it in the book →
The Venus flytrap will clamp shut on a pin just as hard as on a fly. Ellis reported that the lobes "never open again, so long as the animal continues there," and thought a sweet liquor from the red glands "tempts the insect to its destruction"; he added "that if a straw or a pin be introduced between the lobes, they will grasp it as fast as if it were an insect." Read it in the book →
Henbane means "hog's bean" because pigs alone can eat it safely. *Hyoscyamus* comes from words for a pig and a bean, the fruit being bean-like "and, although dangerous to other animals, is said to be eaten by pigs with safety." Authorities flatly contradicted each other on humans — Smith and Martyn claimed to have eaten the seeds without harm, Lightfoot that a few had cost a man his reason and limbs — and a bug and a beetle both take their specific names from feeding on the weed. Read it in the book →
"Papaver" may come from the baby-pap that poppy seeds were boiled into. De Theis derived the name from the Celtic *papa*, pap, "the soft food given to children, in which the seeds were formerly boiled to make the infants sleep." Cybele, mother of the gods, was shown crowned with poppy-heads as a symbol of fecundity. Read it in the book →
A botanist titled his book after the goat that suckled Jupiter. Leonard Plukenet called one work *Amaltheum botanicum*: Amaltheia "was the name of the goat which suckled Jupiter," and because her milk was "exquisite and abundant" the word came to mean richness itself — the famous library of Atticus was likewise called an Amaltheum for the variety of its books. Read it in the book →
An orchid two inches tall, named for the snipe's bill inside its flower. *Ornithocephalus*, found in Trinidad "growing upon rotten sticks in the woods," bears green flowers whose column is drawn out into a fine process "resembling a snipe's bill in miniature" — hence bird-head. The entry ends in defeat: "No successful method of cultivating this plant has yet been discovered." Read it in the book →
One larkspur is named Ajax because gardeners read letters in its petals. *Delphinium Ajacis* is "so called because some traces may be perceived in the flower of what may be likened to the letters AIA" — the mark said to spring from the blood of Ajax. The genus name itself comes from a fancied resemblance to a dolphin. Read it in the book →
A genus commemorates Elizabeth Blackwell, who drew and engraved her herbal herself. *Blackwellia* honours the author of a 1735 Herbal "containing figures of between two and three hundred plants, drawn and engraved by herself" — the plant itself being a curious stove shrub with pretty foliage and "inconspicuous spikes of whitish green flowers." Read it in the book →
Walter Raleigh put a tobacco plant on top of his coat of arms. Tobacco reached England in 1586 by Ralph Lane's hand, "but only the herb for smoking"; Raleigh introduced indoor smoking, and in the Islington house where he lived "are his arms on a shield, with a tobacco plant on the top." The first plant in France was presented to Catherine de Medicis, giving the French name *Herbe à la Reine*. Read it in the book →
Enchanter's nightshade was named for Circe, and grows exactly where a witch would shop. *Circaea* is "poetically named after the enchantress Circe," and the entry approves of the habitat: the genus "grows in damp shady places where shrubs fit for incantations may be supposed to be found." Read it in the book →