Curious Facts

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

1. The deadliest mushroom in the book is the one that looks most wholesome. Of the fatal amanita the authors note simply that "no antidote is known," and warn that it is most dangerous in its pure white form, "resembling the lepiota or edible mushrooms." The safer edible sorts, they add, have caps that are slaty gray, reddish brown, or brownish yellow. Read it in the book →
2. Wild black cherry leaves get more poisonous as they dry. The book singles out the wilting leaf as the danger: "The leaves of the wild black cherry, for example, are quite poisonous, especially when dried." It likewise notes that in the Jamestown weed the seeds are deadlier than the rest of the plant. Read it in the book →
3. Mountain laurel appears on the poison list and the planting lists alike. Kalmia latifolia and sheep laurel sit in the roll of internally poisonous plants between deadly nightshade and darnel — yet mountain laurel is also recommended elsewhere in the book for peaty situations and partially shaded borders. The Christmas rose, Jack-in-the-pulpit and passion flower are on the poison list too. Read it in the book →
4. The swallowed poisons mostly kill livestock; the skin poisons mostly get people. Splitting poisonous plants into internal poisons and skin irritants, the book observes that "the majority of the plants in the first group are more harmful to farm animals than to human beings. In the second group the reverse is true." Read it in the book →
5. A garden book that also tells you which plants cause hay fever. The table of contents runs "XXXVIII. Poisonous Plants — A: Internally poisonous. B: Skin irritants. C: Causing hay fever," giving allergy sufferers a chapter of their own in 1921 alongside the outright toxins. Read it in the book →
6. The rose has seven declared enemies. In the roll-call of ornamental plants and their afflictions the rose is charged with "anthracnose, mildew, crown gall, nematodes, slugs, scales, and thrips," while the oak must contend with anthracnose, caterpillars, powdery mildew, scale, leaf beetle, and an insect called the twig pruner. Read it in the book →
7. The only pest of the Tree of Heaven is something called rose scale. Amid trees listing five and six afflictions apiece — the thorn suffers "caterpillars, scales, plant lice, aphids, and leaf beetle" — the Tree of Heaven gets one solitary entry: rose scale. Read it in the book →
8. Chickweed and dandelion earn a place in the garden — as game bird food. The book's list of game cover plants is divided into spring cover ("foliage, buds, and blossoms") and autumn cover ("nuts or seeds"), and cheerfully includes purslane, sticktight, chickweed and dandelion beside the beech, chestnut and blueberry. Read it in the book →
9. Carpet bedding was planted three inches apart. The spacing table gives alternanthera for carpet bedding a minimum of 3 inches and a maximum of 6 — a living mosaic — while at the other extreme it prescribes pleached allées of thorns and cork-barked maples set a foot apart. Read it in the book →
10. Saxifrage means stone-breaker, and the book uses the name. The plant lists preserve blunt old country names alongside the Latin: Saxifraga as "Stone-breaker," Bidens frondosa as "Sticktight," Lychnis viscaria as "Ragged Robin," Yucca filamentosa as "Adam's Needle," and Dictamnus fraxinella as the "Gas Plant." Read it in the book →