August 23, 2017 • 39 mins
If you’re looking for the Bad Boys of plant life, look no further! Will and Mango discover squirting cucumbers, dynamite trees, and salacious orchids that have ruined more than one wasp's marriage. Plus, we’ll tackle the origins of the guerrilla gardening movement and chat up Trevor Jones, head gardener of The Poison Garden.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will what's that man? Go? Did you know
if there's a poison garden in northeastern England. It's a
full garden devoted exclusively to poisonous plants. It sounds so evil,
but I kind of love it. So what's the purpose
of this? So when I first read about the garden,
I imagine it had been there for like hundreds of years,
but it's only about twenty years old. A duchess inherited
the gardens and she wanted to do something super fun
(00:20):
with them, and she thought what could get kids more
interested than a garden where you're expressly forbidden from stopping
and smelling the flowers. So is it actually dangerous? Yeah?
It really is. So when I saw a picture of
some of the gardeners tending it, they were basically head
to toe and hazmat suits. They wear gloves to protect
their hands from boiling up, and they covered their bodies.
It's crazy, But hearing about the castle, which by the way,
(00:42):
actually served as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies, and
this whole poison garden, it made me realize I know
nothing about the secret world of dangerous and deceptive plants,
and so that's what today's show is all about. Why
don't we dive in? Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to
(01:14):
Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm
joined by my good friend man Guestot Ticketers, and today
we're talking about some of the weirdest, funniest, most dangerous
plants out there. Kind of a field guide to plants
your mother wouldn't approve of. Now I go, are you
actually into plants? I mean not really? So I know
your wife knows a ton about nature and plants, and
she has an environmental science degree. And my grandfather was
(01:36):
a botanist and Forrester, so my mom knows a ton
about plants. But I know virtually nothing. It's like I've
tuned out everything they've been talking about all my life.
But you were the one that wanted to do this
episode so bad? What what? What was it that got
too intrigued? That's right. So our pal Austin helped me
research a bunch of plants for the episode. But I
think there are two things that really got me interested.
So the first was I read a little about Liz
(01:58):
Christie story. Do you know Liz Christie? Yeah, So in
the early seventies. Christie was this landscape painter in New
York City who saw these rundown neighborhoods supposedly as canvases
that she could play with. So she'd go into these
really rough areas with seed bombs. She'd like take a
water balloon and fill it with a mixture of seeds
and water and compost, and then she'd throw it into
these barren places in like the Bowery or whatever. And
(02:20):
it was kind of the first guerrilla gardening. I love
these sea grenades. I mean today they actually make them
with wildflowers. You can toss them into fields and watch
them attract honey bees or whatever. Yeah, it's funny. So
my dad's friend actually had a patent on sad that
you could roll out with wildflowers for the same purpose,
but it never caught on, unfortunately. But Liz Christie was amazing.
(02:41):
She did other things too, Like she'd sneak into these
rough areas with composts and tomato and cucumber plants and
wood and whatever, and she just build vegetable gardens where
she couldn't end. Slowly, the community started pitching in and
harvesting the vegetables. But when the authorities got wind of it,
they tried to stop it, but you know, Christie was
super savvy and she took her story to the press,
(03:01):
and eventually the city got on board. Like they started
leasing all these abandoned plots to community gardeners for a
dollar garden and offering seeds and tools for cheap and
the movement really took off. Like in the late eighties,
there were supposedly eight hundred community gardens in the city.
Eight hundred. I mean, that is an awesome story. So alright, so,
so what does this have to do with dangerous plants?
(03:22):
I know? So I'm off to tangents immediately. And it
didn't take long ago. But I read a little about
Christie and her seed bombs and started thinking does nature
do this at all? And then I stumbled into a
book called Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart, which is so
good and I'm gonna be referencing it throughout the show.
But there's a chapter in it called Duck and Cover.
Duck and cover, Yeah, And the chapter is filled with
(03:44):
dangerous explosive plants like get this. So here's what Stewart
writes about the gorse bush quote on a hot day
sitting near a gors can be hazardous. The pods explode
without warning, ejecting seeds into the air with a noise
that sounds like a gunshot. This is basically a plant
that lures you in with flowers that smell like scented
coconuts or custard, but then it takes pot shots that
(04:06):
you when the weather is right. And there are others
like this too, like like the seeds of a dynamite
tree can shoot up to like three feet away, or
or there's a dwarf mistletoe, which is actually related to
the plant from Christmas time, the one everybody kisses under. Yeah,
so it can actually shoot seeds out at sixty miles
per hour. These plants are no joke. But the most
disgusting exploding plant I heard about the squirting cucumbers. Just
(04:29):
by its name, that sounds so gross. Is it shootout cucumbers?
It rapid fire or what what happens here? Yeah? What's
insane is that most of these plants are pretty closely
related to some normal plants. So the squirting cucumber is
actually related to cucumbers and gourds and squashes. It's like
in that general family. But it's so much grosser. And
at first I thought the squirting was about the wetness
(04:51):
shooting out, and it is. As Stewart writes, the plants
two inch long fruits are famous for bursting when right,
squirting a slimy mucus like use and seeds almost twenty
feet away. You've said, squirting too much, just starting to
gross me. And it sounds like a vegetable from like
Nickelodeon or something. I mean, the fact that it's slimy
makes it so much more gross, I know, But but
it's dangerous too. Apparently that veggie mucus will sting your
(05:14):
skin if it touches it, and it'll make you vomit
if you ingest it. But the worst thing about the
squirting cucumber if you accidentally ingested in a drink, like
if that mucus shoots twenty ft into your beer glass
or whatever, the squirting cucumber will give you the squirts.
I think we've talked enough about this one. I think
it's definitely worth avoiding. But honestly, I can see why
you're fascinated by this stuff. And when you told me
(05:36):
about this episode and the field guide idea, I was
thinking it'd be really fun to organize some of these
plants and the categories of kids you might want to
avoid on the playground. You know, there's those explosive types
definitely sound like the emotionally volatile kids you'd want to
tiptoe around. But why don't we start I don't know,
why don't we start with the pig pens. I mean,
I want some of that stinky stuff you can't help
but avoid. Yeah, the pig pens. I love it. So
(06:00):
let me just look through my notes because I know
what I wanted to talk about here. So I started
listing off a few favorites just because the smells are
so amazing, just in case you're like looking for a
new cologne or whatever. So the Stinky Gord smells like armpits.
That even has stinky in its name. Yeah, it's actually
called the Missouri Gord or the fetid Cord, but it
smells pretty bad. Then you've got the calorie pair, which
(06:22):
is this tree that smells like rotten fish and the
box would and when it gets too much sunshine, it
actually smells like cat pe Wow, which is kind of funny, right.
I Mean, I feel like so many of the facts
that you and I remember are about things that smell good,
you know, like the bent a wrong. Is this half bear,
half cat looking thing that actually smells like buttered popcorn? Yeah,
I love that, But this shrub actually feels like it
(06:43):
belongs in a litter box. But to me, the greatest
pig pen of them all, the plant that most needs
a bath has to be the corpse flower. All right,
So I take that bent a wrong fact back, because
I know we have discussed the corpse flower in the
past that it's it's kind of like the rock star
plant for smelling so bad. I know, people travel, we'll
see it bloom, not just because of how bad it smells,
but also because it doesn't bloom that often. I think.
(07:05):
I remember, it's huge, right, is it like seven ft
tall or something. Yeah, it's kind of magnificently large and
also really putrid. And apparently when it blooms, the spadix,
which is this giant fleshy stem, heats up to about
ninety degrees to help cook up and spread that aroma.
And actually I wrote down some of the things the
corse flower supposedly smells like according to observers, So the
(07:26):
most common description is quote smells like death, which which
feels a little on the nose for something called the
corse flower. But if you've got a more discerning palette,
it might smell like well, rotting flesh, hot garbage, diapers,
rotten fish, cheese, smelly socks, and also cabbage cabbage, which
(07:48):
actually might be the worst smelling of all of those things.
And I love that humans are so curious about how
bad something smells. I mean, they immediately want to smell
it too. It kind of reminds me. You remember that
old Tom Hank sketch from S and All. He drinks
that sip of old milk and he's like, oh, this
is so terrible, we have to try it. The next
person comes over and tries it, says the same thing,
and they just keep smelling and eating these terrible things
(08:09):
because they just have to try it for themselves. But
we kind of do this naturally as humans for some reason. Yeah,
And to be clear, I have no interest in traveling
out of my way to smell a corpse flower. But
it also feels to me like the Harry Potter jelly beans,
you know, where they It could be delightful or disgusting,
and either way, people are happy to have tried to.
You know, my kids love those things. Oh mine too.
(08:29):
Some of them are so gross. There were a couple
I honestly could not eat. Speaking of Harry Potter, Actually
do want to talk about the man breaks and some
of the other stuff from the books that exist in
real life. But before we do that, can we do
a quick section on I don't know, let's call the
Eddie Haskell plants. Why Eddie Haskell? Well, these are the
plants that seem totally harmless and kind of like goody
(08:49):
two shoes, but can actually be bad influences. Yeah, there
there are a lot of plants. I didn't realize we're dangerous.
Like there's the Laurel hedges, which always seems so running
the mill to me. They're actually in that point is
in garden we talked about at the top. Apparently when
people trimmed the hedges and take the clippings to the dump,
they've fallen asleep behind the wheel from the fumes. Oh wow,
All right, do you have anything that's maybe a little
more common than that though, Yeah, I've got a couple.
(09:11):
So rhubarb believes are apparently toxic. There's this terrific story
from a Great Britain in nineteen seventeen when a cook
used a recipe she found in the newspaper. It was
in this wartime tips column, and the combination of adding
baking soda to the rhubarb actually killed the minister she
was cooking for. It was super tragic. But apparently the
leaves can cause weakness and difficulty breathing on their own
(09:33):
and uh. And then there are things like cashews, you know,
but which I know you and I have talked about before.
But cashews, while they're totally delicious, the plant actually comes
from the same family as poison oak and ivy and
you actually have to steam them open to get to
the tasty truths. So even though you're getting them supposedly row,
they're actually coming to you a little cooked. But you know,
Amy Stewart tells this horrible story of a little league
(09:54):
game in Pennsylvania where they sold some cashews that had
pieces of a shell in them, and this law huge
percentage of the little league parents ended up with rashes
on their arms and armpits and buttocks for the fruit.
I don't know. I don't know why buttocks these people
put in their cashews. But my favorite deceptively nice plant
that's actually not worth hanging out with. Celery. What's what's
(10:15):
so bad about celery? Well, nothing in small doses. But
if you eat a pound of it and then go
to a tanning salt, the celery will actually make you
extremely sensitive to UV light and it can pigment your
skin color and give you blisters. I mean, if you're
going tanning, go light on the cellery. It's really good advice.
I'm glad we're here for our listeners, but that does
sound awful. All right, So we've done a few unhinged
(10:37):
plants that will pop off at you, some stinky plants
you'll probably know to avoid, and then those sneaky, silent
ones that are hiding a dark side. So how about
we save some of the liars, cheats and Harry Potter
plants for after a break. So at the top of
(10:58):
the show, we were talking about this incredib about Poisoned Garden,
and we're lucky today because we actually have the head
gardener at the Poisoned Garden. But Trevor Jones welcomed to
part time genius. Hello. All right, so one of our
favorite things is just the sign to the entrance that says,
these plants can kill and it's so ominous. What's the
philocity behind the garden and how do you choose what
(11:20):
plants go in there? The Duchess of Northumberland, who created
the hold of the garden, was fascinated with poisonous plants.
She felt that children these days tend to sit in
front of computer screens and look at them of our phones,
but never get out into the big wide world and
experience the environment that they're growing up in. So she
was aware that many children these days don't know the
(11:42):
harmful effects of plants, especially native plants that grow here
in the UK, but also some exotic ones, and so
part of the reasoning for the Poison Garden was to
capture the imagination of a child and teach them about
the harmful effects of plants and how they would all
kill you. So we have storytellers that build up a
(12:03):
huge drama before anybody actually enters, and you're warned not
to touch the plants, stand too close to them, smell them,
will definitely not taste them, because they all have the
ability to kill you. Well, speaking of children, I'm guessing
these plants are kind of like children, and that you
can't pick a favorite, but we're still going to ask
you anyway, do you have a favorite plant? There? I
(12:23):
like to tell the story of acrono item. It's a
cottage garden plant. It's her basis. It dives down the winter,
shoots up again in the spring, and it has fantastic,
deep blue flowers. It's often called monkshood because the flower
looks like an old fashioned monkshood. Now, the whole of
that plant is poisonous, but we relate it to an
(12:45):
up to date murder story because in two thousands and ten,
a woman called lack Finder Singh who had fallen out
with her lover. He had kicked her out of the
home that they shared, so to get revenge on him,
she found some aconite the police seed, and she crushed
it up and then went back into the house and
(13:05):
third into his curry which was in the fridge. He
then returned home from work with his new girlfriend and
ad to curry, and he died within thirty six hours.
And when toxicology reports came back, they said that it
was all down to aconite and poisoning, and they chased
it back to luck Finder and she's now in prison.
(13:25):
So when did it occur to you that being a
poison gardener could be a real job. Well, I came
to Annick ten years ago and I've never heard about
a collection of poisonous plants, although I've been in gardening
all my days until I got to Annek and then
the fascination that is all about the Poison Garden started
to infect me as well, and so I was very
(13:47):
keen on poisonous plants. And I'm curious, how did the
Harry Potter movies filming there change admissions to the garden.
We've had a spinoff from how He Potter film because
in how He pos talked about Man Drake, and so
we grow Man Drake in the Poison Garden because there's
a lot of superstition around Man Drake. At one time
that was more prized than gold for its magical properties,
(14:10):
and even today people will buy mandrake roots and chop
them up. It's supposed to be a very good affle
dizzy act, but I can't guarantee you now. But there's
a lot of superstition about the plant. And the plant
has a very strong, thick cap roots very much like
a carrot, but it forks, so it's often have two
(14:32):
stems to it, so when it gets dug up, it
can often look like a little man with two legs
and two arms, and they say that it's the devil himself.
And if you dig a mandrake up, you can actually
hear it's screaming as it comes up out of the ground.
And then when you see it, it does look like
a little like a little man. And so if you
do that, you're cursed. So the stories goes. If you
(14:55):
want to get rid of your man drake used to
have to tie a rope around the manre it itself
and then around donkey or a dog. Kick the donkey
or the dog and they would run off and they
would pull an and rake up and as it screamed,
so they heard the screaming, they were the culprit because
they pulled it up. The donkey or the dog was
cursed and you survived to tell the tale. What's the
(15:17):
best thing you overhear the gardens? Like, what's the most
satisfying part of the job in the poison garden. It's
relating the stories that we tell to everyday occurrences we
grow in the poison garden. We grow just common laurel
and a lot of our visitors will grow low as
a hedge. It's very very common evergreen plant, but it
(15:38):
has the ability to kill you, believe it or not,
because the laurel leaves um produce cyanide. So when you
cut your laurel hedge, if you accept up the clippings
and put them into your car to take them to
the dump, as you sit in your car, so the
cyanide will start to build up in the car. That
then affects your nervous system and it's starts the brain
(15:59):
of oxygen. And so many people don't be like that,
and lots of our visitors have told us that they
have start exactly that they's driven to the dump with
these cuttings in the back of their car and they've
got very light headed and one gentleman he is admitted
to crashing into a lamp post. It was all down
to cyanide poisoning. What's Trevor, I can't wait to get
(16:20):
over to the gardens. This has been fascinating and thanks
so much for joining us on Part Time Genius. Well pleasure,
welcome back to Part Time Genius. Today we've been thumbing
(16:41):
our way through a field guide of plants. Your mother
wouldn't approve of I knew all this talk of plants
and poisons has reminded me of that Debora Bloom story
and the roots of c s I. You know, that's
actually one of my favorite stories. But would you mind
telling it to our listeners. So Debora Blooms, this wonderful
journalist who wrote The Poisoner's Handbook. But in it she
tells this great story from Belgium. It's about poisoning by
(17:02):
nicotine in the eighteen fifties. So basically at the time
no one knew how to detect plant alkaloids from dead bodies.
And the way she tells that, there's a French prosecutor
and a famous death by morphine case, and he confirms
this in the trial and in the courtroom he said,
let us tell would be poisoners, use plant poisons, fear nothing.
(17:23):
Your crime will go unpunished. There's no physical evidence, it
cannot be found. I mean he was talking from a
point of frustration. But at least one person took his advice.
It was the Count of Boucarmi. So this is one
of those classic cases of people killing their relative for inheritance,
and the Count and Countess lived extravagantly. They were basically
like the FitzGeralds of their time, throwing outrageous parties and
(17:45):
living beyond their means. So they needed more cash, and
they knew that when the count as sickly brother passed away,
they'd inherit his loot, But it turns out he wasn't
dying fast enough, so they decided to speed up the process.
So the count started experience ending with nicotine poisoning. He
had this converted laundry shaw that he turned into a
lab and claimed he was using it to mix up perfumes.
(18:07):
But when his servants peek in, he's extracting things from
plants and has vials and burners set up in there,
and suddenly tiny dead animals starts showing up left outside
the lab. I mean, they saw dead birds, rabbits and
several other animals, which was of course suspicious to them,
and so they take note of this. And then the
couple had their in law over for dinner, and there's
(18:28):
more suspicious stuff that happens. Then they send the kids
away for dinner to eat elsewhere, which is pretty unusual
for them. The Countess insists on ladling out the food
herself and distributing the plates herself and the servants are
pointedly sent away, and then during the course of the meal,
her brother passes out with a thud. The count and
countess claim it's a stroke, but something fishy has clearly happened,
(18:52):
and they rinse his throat with vinegar and burned the
dead man's clothes and basically get rid of all the evidence,
which sounds so shady, right, I know, But here's the
genius of it and why plant poisoning used to work
so well. The nicotine is made up of super simple
organic materials. It's just carbon and nitrogen and hydrogen and
you know, all the stuff that's in the air and
in our bodies. But it's also a super effective poison
(19:15):
that works astonishingly well and at high speeds when it's
in high doses. And so the servants report the case,
and the police knew who did it, but have zero proof.
Then Belgian's most famous chemist, Jeane sarves Stas, who spends
three months figuring out how to pull alkaloids from preserved tissues,
and he finally uses the proof to convince a judge
(19:35):
of their guilt, and the justice is swift, but The
crazy part is that while Stas's process has been updated,
according to Bloom, it's still used in toxicology labs today. Crazy.
It really is kind of the rut of CSID. But
what's the moral of all this? I guess the moral
would be, you know, don't use plants to murder your
friends and family. And maybe more than that, don't murder.
(19:57):
That would be that the moral don't murder does like
smart words to live by, and uh, you know what's funny.
Amy Stewart makes this point in the book that poisons
are all around us, like a lot of common house
plants are poisonous. The peace lily, the philodendron. I mean,
we had both of those in our home growing up.
And the truth is you probably wouldn't eat much of
either because they'd make your mouth burned before you'd scarf
(20:18):
down too much. Well, what's interesting is that most house
plants were never chosen for their safety. They were chosen
because they thrive year round in a fifty to seventy
degree climate, you know, the same temperature as our homes,
which is why many of them are actually tropical plants
from South American and African jungles. I mean that's something
I never considered. Yeah, me either. But I think we've
gotten a little off topic here, so let's let's get
(20:39):
back to some of those plants your mom doesn't want
you playing with. I have to be I love that
squirting cucumber plant. You got any more like that? Yeah?
So there are two other plants I flagged. The first
one is called the African milk tree, and it's disgusting
because if you don't prune it carefully, it can squirt.
The African milk sapp at get big with the squirts.
I guess you took that requests the most terrifying. And
(21:01):
there's this one scientist who's pruning his tree and he
got it right in the eye and he used to
have like vision in the eye, and then he went
legally blind and that sounds terrible. But after a rigorous
course of sailing that he gave himself for ten days,
his eye went back to being, which I thought was crazy.
That it causes this temporary blindness that you can come
back from. Wow, that's wild, all right. And and the
(21:22):
other one, Yeah, so this one's totally amazing and also
temporarily takes away from one of your abilities. But it's
called the dumb cane. As Amy Stewart puts a quote,
this tropical South American plant is well known for its
ability to temporarily inflame vocal cords, leaving people completely unable
to speak. And that does sound like something out of
Harry Potter, and we did promise to talk about her, definitely,
(21:45):
So it's like straight out of the Charms and Potions
books or any of Professor Sprouts lessons. But before we
get into that, the plant diffian Bakia has one more
unusual side effect. In the Caribbean, men used to chew
it as a male contraceptive, really because they ust their
ability to smooth talk women or something. No, it actually
has nothing to do with them losing their voice. There's
some sort of historical preparation that we don't know about
(22:07):
that people used to use to make sure they didn't
have kids, and it was kind of like an early
version of the male pill. It supposedly lasted forty eight hours.
But what's weirder is that the Nazis actually started playing
with the plant in the hopes that they could make
certain populations sterile, and luckily they could never get enough
of the plant to really experiment on. That's really creepy,
but I do love the idea of plants with superpowers.
(22:30):
All right, what other Harry Potter type plants. Well, there's
also the Man Drake, which Trevor talked about earlier on
at Hogwarts. Mandrakes are one of those plants that are
always wailing and whining. Would they get pulled out of
the soil and they shriek at these high pitched volumes.
But I had no idea. That was like a myth
from medieval times, And in fact, Austin told me that
the preferred method for uprooting Man Drake was to use
(22:51):
a rope and tie it to a dog and then
just leave, and when the dog finally pulled away, the
man Drake would get uprooted. But there was this idea
that even the dog might die from doing the uprooting,
which I just think that's the worst possible way. Yeah,
let's not do it that way. So um any Stewart
actually has another story about the plant, and that's that
(23:11):
Hannibal used to leave Mandrake confused wines for his enemies,
which would intoxicate them and give them hallucinations, and then
you'd come back to easily defeat them when they were
drunk and drugged. Of course, the fact that he used
to ride and on giant elephants probably only made those
hallucinations were so I'm guessing. Yeah. So there's some other
plants that get shout outs in Harry Potter, like monks Hood,
which is actually a toxic plant that gardeners need gloves
(23:34):
to handle. But I kind of love the plants that
cure things. And one I found completely fascinating is the
ordeal beans. Oh I know about these? Aren't these the
truth telling beans? Like I think I read that if
you swallow the beans and vomited, you were considered innocent,
but if you ate the beans and died, then you
were guilty. Yes, this perverse logic, and it was kind
of like at the Salem witch trials, where if you're
(23:55):
thrown in a river and drown, you were innocent, but
if you floated you were definitely a witch. But doesn't.
What's fascinating about these beans to me. What's crazy is
that the beans are actually an antidote or a cure
for mandrake poisoning, Like if you've been poisoned by man
drake in an emergency room, they can actually use these
beans to restore heartbeats and snap people back into consciousness.
That is incredible. All right. So, so we've covered the
(24:17):
Eddie Haskell's the stink weeds, and now we've covered some
of the plants your mom might worry or two into
fantasy or something. I guess those are the uh let's
call those the comic concept. But I think it's time
to get to talk about one we've been waiting for.
And these are the bad boys of plant life, the
liars and the cheats and the overseex plants that are
a little too salacious for their own good until I'm
ready for this, right all right, So before we get
(24:39):
to those, how but we take a little break, all right, man.
This is a special treat today because usually our quiz
takers join us by phone, but today our guests are
here in studio with us. We have the hosts of
one of my favorite shows called Food Stuff here at
(25:00):
How Stuff Works, Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to
part time Genius. Thanks for having yeah, thank you so much.
All right, So, again, like I mentioned, this is one
of my favorite shows and it's so fun because it's
not just history and science it's like all of this
combined in a way that I haven't heard many food
shows doing. And I was curious to hear from you guys.
You know what gave you the idea to start the show? Well,
(25:22):
first of all, all hush and and second of all, Um,
I don't know. We love food. Yeah, we're kind of
super nerds about it. Yeah. Annie in particular, I think
the day that I realized that I wanted her on
the show, Um, I came to her, it was like, please,
we had the show. I need a co host. And
it's so terrific. Was we were out in in Austin
at south By Southwest and she had planned months in advance,
(25:46):
like and like put in orders for barbecue places and
like had this entire map of everywhere that we needed
to go to eat in the sea and I was
like this one, Like this is I call it maximizing.
I like to maximize my experience when I visited city,
and uh, we had such a good time. We tried
so much good food. Yeah. We get so excited about
(26:07):
all the research because every episode has a fact that
I just would never have never have guests. Yea, it's
so interesting through food science. I feel a little bit
less like a you know, mad scientist in training. Right,
how do you guys come up with the topics? Obviously
there are a lot of foods out there, but how
do you decide which ones to focus on? We do
get a lot of requests in from listeners and those
(26:28):
are tremendously helpful, like stuff that we wouldn't necessarily have
thought to do. But also it's just like we'll run
across stuff. You know, what was it this week? Aspects? Aspects? Oh,
I went on such a rabbit hole about as it's
a meat gelatine. Um, these were really big in like
the nineteen sixties or so. It's a jelly mold that's savory,
(26:49):
made of usually like bone broth a k A stock
as they call it in the industry, and that that'll
set up into a good solid mold and it's usually
got like bits of meat and egg and vegetable and
off in it. It's they look they look like they're
from a hell dimension. Yeah, I mean, I mean they're
supposedly delicious. They made me laugh alout just looking at
(27:11):
the picture. Highly recommends to go down a similar rabbit hole. Well,
for our listeners, there have been great episodes on Bloody
Mary's Fried Chicken, Honey, the Weird History of the Graham Cracker,
which is I expected it to be a great episode
and it was so so it's always a lot of fun.
Part of the reason we wanted to have you on
today though, as you did uh an episode recently about
(27:33):
the tomato and you know we're doing this episode on
dangerous and poisonous plans. You guys have talked about how
Europeans for for a long time thought that tomatoes were poisonous.
I thought it gets you guys to explain why that
was certainly wealthy Europeans. I think that the poorer folks
were just like, it's a food, you should eat it, right, Well,
(27:53):
wealthier Europeans like to eat off of these fancy pewter plates,
especially at the time this was around the f fifteen
or sixteen hundreds m h. And tomatoes have a lot
of acid, and so the acid would cause um, lead
to leak out of the pewter plates and could lead
to lead poisoning, which can lead to death. Yeah, a
(28:13):
legitimate reason for being afraid. Also, um, they were kind
of tomatoes were kind of poorly classified or unfortunately classified. Yeah,
correctly classified but as a night shade, which is a
type of poisonous plant in some cases. Yes. Uh. And
from that, yes, um, they were called um lego persicons.
(28:36):
That's how they were classified, which translates the Greek word
is wolf peach. Right. And part of the reason they
were called that is because they were in the night
shaded family and related to wolf spane, which people thought
at the time could summon were wolves. Oh nice, So
you got to talk about were wolves. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
(28:57):
that's so exciting. Yeah, as a love of the title
of episode, right, it was you say, Tomato, I say,
and wolf spaine in nightshade do have hallucinogenic qualities. So
so it's easy to see where people might think that
where wolves are involved, if they're hanging out around too
much wolf spain. Right. But that is really interesting to
imagine that that those that had much less money wouldn't
(29:19):
have thought of them as as being poisonous because they
wouldn't have had that introduction of yeah, so the fancy
pewter plates, and they wouldn't have gotten that taxonomy lesson.
So yeah, yeah, rich people would keep them on their
tables as like ornaments, as like goth table decoration, like
they thought that they were poisonous and they would have
them as these table centerpieces. Yeah, well, very cool. That
(29:42):
that made us think we should have you guys on
the show. We've been wanting to have you here anyway,
so it was a good excuse to get you here
to play this very very important quiz. What quiz are
we going to have these guys play today? Super important?
It's called real name of a mushroom or a band
that's playing south By Southwest this year, so they're the
south By Connection again. So there are tons of names
(30:02):
of mushrooms that are really quirking strange, like scurfy twiglet
and fingered candle snuff names of actual mushrooms. Does that
make you hungry? Yeah, so we thought it'd be fun
to have you come on and work together. We're gonna
have you work together because your teammates too. I can
see how you do in a five question quiz. Okay,
number one, Potato earth Ball. Is this a real mushroom
(30:26):
or the name of a band playing at south By
Southwest this year? Potato earth Since since it's got the
earth element to it, I would say I would say
it's an actual mushroom. I agree. Yeah, Wow, these guys
are good, right. It's a holy puffball mushroom? Is that
(30:47):
from a description? The sexy shape of potatoes? Sees there?
One for one? Number two snake tongue truffle club that
sounds like a bar option. Um, I think I think
(31:10):
drinking was involved in that one, though, So I'm going
to go with band. Do you would you agree? Yeah?
I think that's a band. I'm glad we stumped him
on at least one. Well, it was named in the UK,
so there might have been some drinking in It actually
looks like a big snake tongue sticking out of the ground.
(31:31):
Number three a yucky duster, yucky duster, and he's making
the most amazing face right now. I'm going to say
that either if it is a band, it's also poisonous.
I'm gonna go with mushroom. Oh wow, we got him again. Dang,
(31:51):
it's a band. It's a four person band that sounds
completely different depending on which member wrote the song. Oh
all right, here we go. You still have as for
the big Price. Number four pancake Crust. We're trying so
hard to not just like snort after every name we're hearing. Yeah,
(32:12):
oh goodness. I mean that could certainly describe the skin
on the top of I mean, I feel like I've
seen that thing before. Well, I'll trust your judgment on
that one. It's a real funny say infects a stone
fruit trees. Nicely done. Okay, this is the big one
for the big prize. Number five, Delicate Steve, Delicate Steve
(32:35):
mushroom or a banded south By Well, delicate Steve certainly
sounds like a band that I I've seen four It
sounds like some band members that I think many different Steves.
They're all delicate. They're all delicate. Sorry about its Steve's
So they're going with band? What do you think? You're right?
It's a band from New Jersey, which shouldn't be confused
(32:57):
with a slow Steve. A band from Berlin that's also
playing out going there, oh man. So, so how did
they do today? Mango? They did so great, we're gonna
give him a prize. So today they're going home with
there's an actual prize of Rockabye, Baby Lullabye renditions of
(33:17):
justin timber Lakes justin timber Lake c D. I had
on my desk, oh Man, it's the only one. Good
luck finding a place to play a CD. Yeah, I
have to fight over this. Yeah, definitely, that's all right. Well,
I hope all our listeners will check out food Stuff.
It's a terrific show. Lauren and Annie, thanks so much
for joining us. Oh, thank you guys so much. Thank
you for having us so mago. We were just about
(33:52):
to talk about some of the liars and the sexpots
and you know, the plants your mother definitely doesn't want
you hanging out with. So who's your favorite liar in
the mix? Yeah, there's definitely some crafty greenery out there,
just spinning lies and trying to get their seed into
the wild. But I think my favorite ones are the
ones that trick insects. So there's an orchid that's apparently
so sexy that wasts tried to mate with it, and
(34:14):
it isn't just romance. It's like aggressive wasp sex, and
the dumb male wasps gets so excited they get covered
in pollen and then move on to another orchid, spreading
the pollen along the way. But the best and weirdest
part is that the orchids are so good at their
deception that male wasps actually prefer the flowers to females,
and sometimes they'll leave a female wasp mid population because
(34:35):
the flower seems that much more appealing. So I don't
think you said, what what it's called. What's it called? Yeah,
it's called the tongue orchid, which is which is gross.
And wow, that's a good one, all right, So what
else you got, Well, this one's hilarious. While impersonating an
insect is one thing, impersonating a piece of dung is
a totally different level. But that's what the restiness say.
I don't think I'm pronouncing that right, But it's from
(34:56):
South Africa and it does this when it drops seeds
that look suspiciously like antelope dung on the ground. Wow,
So they just are they marking their territory. It's so
much more than that. So basically, the seeds attract dung beetles,
which just saunter up the seed and roll it around.
And when they decided to burrow into it, instead of
getting a delicious treat, they discovered that they've been tricked
into planning a seed in the ground. All right, that's
(35:19):
pretty genius. But that's a common survival strategy, right, Well,
I mean it's common enough that has a name. It's
called fecal mimoric carrey. Alright, so we probably need to
wrap this up it. How about you send us off
with one last plant that baffled you. Yeah, so I
think I have just the one. So here's one that
mother definitely wouldn't approve of, which scientists are just completely
delighted by. It's an orchid called the halka glossom amasanium,
(35:42):
which is this bisexual flower. Well this sounds juicy, okay,
go on, Yeah, so basically the plant works against gravity
to pollinate itself. But let me just quote new scientists
because they do a way better job of explaining it.
Although many plants self fertilize, a rare orchid that grows
on tree trunks in China takes the process to hitherto
unknown heights through a gymnastic feat never seen before in plants.
(36:04):
It bends its pollen containing male another round through a
full circle before jabbing it into the female stigma to
complete fertilization at sixty days. The act takes even longer
than tantric sex. This basically flower point. I kind of
feel dirty listening to that. I mean, what's crazy is
that the plant can basically self pollinate without any of
the standard means insects when gravity, rain, none of that.
(36:28):
It's kind of insane that it does it all on
its own. But you know one thing we could never
do on our own, I do the part time genius
fact off. Yeah, let's go for it. M R. Did
(36:49):
you know that you don't need those little flower chemical
packets to make your flowers perk up? A little viagora
will make the flower stems straighten up fast. According to
Business Insider, auguste, teen seventy seven set the record for
the most flowers sold in the US on a single day.
What happened? It was the day after Elvis passed away.
Oh that's crazy, all right? What did you know that
venus fly traps amid a fluorescent blue light to attract bugs. Also,
(37:13):
they're the official state carnivorous plan of North Carolina? I mean,
what else is North Carolina going to give it to?
Speaking of carnivorous plants, did you know figs aren't considered vegetarian.
Figs are pollinated by wasps and then the flower captures
and traps them. So there's wasps that's been coughton digested
in most figs eat, which is funny to think that
figs aren't vegetarian while oysters might be. I mean, according
(37:35):
to some vegans and vegetarians at least, it's because they
don't experience pain. But that's not my fact. That's not
the fact. Did you know that plants can hear water?
I thought I thought that was just like an old
wives tale. I used to think that too, but scientific
American and a professor from Australia proved me wrong. Was
Professor Monica Gagliano, and she devised an experiment with pea
seedlings where plants inch their way towards pipes, and she
(37:58):
theorized that while the plants later followed moisture grades, they
were initially drawn to the water sources by sound waves
from inside the pipes. That's amazing. So I'm gonna have
to let you take home the trophy today. Thanks, and
I think that's it for today's episode of Part Time Genius.
Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part
(38:27):
Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and
wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
important things. We couldn't even begin to understand Chris and
McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
song and does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Coo gets the
(38:49):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Do we do? We forget
Jason Jason who did the difficult differ
Guess what will what's that man? Go? Did you know
if there's a poison garden in northeastern England. It's a
full garden devoted exclusively to poisonous plants. It sounds so evil,
but I kind of love it. So what's the purpose
of this? So when I first read about the garden,
I imagine it had been there for like hundreds of years,
but it's only about twenty years old. A duchess inherited
the gardens and she wanted to do something super fun
(00:20):
with them, and she thought what could get kids more
interested than a garden where you're expressly forbidden from stopping
and smelling the flowers. So is it actually dangerous? Yeah?
It really is. So when I saw a picture of
some of the gardeners tending it, they were basically head
to toe and hazmat suits. They wear gloves to protect
their hands from boiling up, and they covered their bodies.
It's crazy, But hearing about the castle, which by the way,
(00:42):
actually served as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies, and
this whole poison garden, it made me realize I know
nothing about the secret world of dangerous and deceptive plants,
and so that's what today's show is all about. Why
don't we dive in? Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to
(01:14):
Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm
joined by my good friend man Guestot Ticketers, and today
we're talking about some of the weirdest, funniest, most dangerous
plants out there. Kind of a field guide to plants
your mother wouldn't approve of. Now I go, are you
actually into plants? I mean not really? So I know
your wife knows a ton about nature and plants, and
she has an environmental science degree. And my grandfather was
(01:36):
a botanist and Forrester, so my mom knows a ton
about plants. But I know virtually nothing. It's like I've
tuned out everything they've been talking about all my life.
But you were the one that wanted to do this
episode so bad? What what? What was it that got
too intrigued? That's right. So our pal Austin helped me
research a bunch of plants for the episode. But I
think there are two things that really got me interested.
So the first was I read a little about Liz
(01:58):
Christie story. Do you know Liz Christie? Yeah, So in
the early seventies. Christie was this landscape painter in New
York City who saw these rundown neighborhoods supposedly as canvases
that she could play with. So she'd go into these
really rough areas with seed bombs. She'd like take a
water balloon and fill it with a mixture of seeds
and water and compost, and then she'd throw it into
these barren places in like the Bowery or whatever. And
(02:20):
it was kind of the first guerrilla gardening. I love
these sea grenades. I mean today they actually make them
with wildflowers. You can toss them into fields and watch
them attract honey bees or whatever. Yeah, it's funny. So
my dad's friend actually had a patent on sad that
you could roll out with wildflowers for the same purpose,
but it never caught on, unfortunately. But Liz Christie was amazing.
(02:41):
She did other things too, Like she'd sneak into these
rough areas with composts and tomato and cucumber plants and
wood and whatever, and she just build vegetable gardens where
she couldn't end. Slowly, the community started pitching in and
harvesting the vegetables. But when the authorities got wind of it,
they tried to stop it, but you know, Christie was
super savvy and she took her story to the press,
(03:01):
and eventually the city got on board. Like they started
leasing all these abandoned plots to community gardeners for a
dollar garden and offering seeds and tools for cheap and
the movement really took off. Like in the late eighties,
there were supposedly eight hundred community gardens in the city.
Eight hundred. I mean, that is an awesome story. So alright, so,
so what does this have to do with dangerous plants?
(03:22):
I know? So I'm off to tangents immediately. And it
didn't take long ago. But I read a little about
Christie and her seed bombs and started thinking does nature
do this at all? And then I stumbled into a
book called Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart, which is so
good and I'm gonna be referencing it throughout the show.
But there's a chapter in it called Duck and Cover.
Duck and cover, Yeah, And the chapter is filled with
(03:44):
dangerous explosive plants like get this. So here's what Stewart
writes about the gorse bush quote on a hot day
sitting near a gors can be hazardous. The pods explode
without warning, ejecting seeds into the air with a noise
that sounds like a gunshot. This is basically a plant
that lures you in with flowers that smell like scented
coconuts or custard, but then it takes pot shots that
(04:06):
you when the weather is right. And there are others
like this too, like like the seeds of a dynamite
tree can shoot up to like three feet away, or
or there's a dwarf mistletoe, which is actually related to
the plant from Christmas time, the one everybody kisses under. Yeah,
so it can actually shoot seeds out at sixty miles
per hour. These plants are no joke. But the most
disgusting exploding plant I heard about the squirting cucumbers. Just
(04:29):
by its name, that sounds so gross. Is it shootout cucumbers?
It rapid fire or what what happens here? Yeah? What's
insane is that most of these plants are pretty closely
related to some normal plants. So the squirting cucumber is
actually related to cucumbers and gourds and squashes. It's like
in that general family. But it's so much grosser. And
at first I thought the squirting was about the wetness
(04:51):
shooting out, and it is. As Stewart writes, the plants
two inch long fruits are famous for bursting when right,
squirting a slimy mucus like use and seeds almost twenty
feet away. You've said, squirting too much, just starting to
gross me. And it sounds like a vegetable from like
Nickelodeon or something. I mean, the fact that it's slimy
makes it so much more gross, I know, But but
it's dangerous too. Apparently that veggie mucus will sting your
(05:14):
skin if it touches it, and it'll make you vomit
if you ingest it. But the worst thing about the
squirting cucumber if you accidentally ingested in a drink, like
if that mucus shoots twenty ft into your beer glass
or whatever, the squirting cucumber will give you the squirts.
I think we've talked enough about this one. I think
it's definitely worth avoiding. But honestly, I can see why
you're fascinated by this stuff. And when you told me
(05:36):
about this episode and the field guide idea, I was
thinking it'd be really fun to organize some of these
plants and the categories of kids you might want to
avoid on the playground. You know, there's those explosive types
definitely sound like the emotionally volatile kids you'd want to
tiptoe around. But why don't we start I don't know,
why don't we start with the pig pens. I mean,
I want some of that stinky stuff you can't help
but avoid. Yeah, the pig pens. I love it. So
(06:00):
let me just look through my notes because I know
what I wanted to talk about here. So I started
listing off a few favorites just because the smells are
so amazing, just in case you're like looking for a
new cologne or whatever. So the Stinky Gord smells like armpits.
That even has stinky in its name. Yeah, it's actually
called the Missouri Gord or the fetid Cord, but it
smells pretty bad. Then you've got the calorie pair, which
(06:22):
is this tree that smells like rotten fish and the
box would and when it gets too much sunshine, it
actually smells like cat pe Wow, which is kind of funny, right.
I Mean, I feel like so many of the facts
that you and I remember are about things that smell good,
you know, like the bent a wrong. Is this half bear,
half cat looking thing that actually smells like buttered popcorn? Yeah,
I love that, But this shrub actually feels like it
(06:43):
belongs in a litter box. But to me, the greatest
pig pen of them all, the plant that most needs
a bath has to be the corpse flower. All right,
So I take that bent a wrong fact back, because
I know we have discussed the corpse flower in the
past that it's it's kind of like the rock star
plant for smelling so bad. I know, people travel, we'll
see it bloom, not just because of how bad it smells,
but also because it doesn't bloom that often. I think.
(07:05):
I remember, it's huge, right, is it like seven ft
tall or something. Yeah, it's kind of magnificently large and
also really putrid. And apparently when it blooms, the spadix,
which is this giant fleshy stem, heats up to about
ninety degrees to help cook up and spread that aroma.
And actually I wrote down some of the things the
corse flower supposedly smells like according to observers, So the
(07:26):
most common description is quote smells like death, which which
feels a little on the nose for something called the
corse flower. But if you've got a more discerning palette,
it might smell like well, rotting flesh, hot garbage, diapers,
rotten fish, cheese, smelly socks, and also cabbage cabbage, which
(07:48):
actually might be the worst smelling of all of those things.
And I love that humans are so curious about how
bad something smells. I mean, they immediately want to smell
it too. It kind of reminds me. You remember that
old Tom Hank sketch from S and All. He drinks
that sip of old milk and he's like, oh, this
is so terrible, we have to try it. The next
person comes over and tries it, says the same thing,
and they just keep smelling and eating these terrible things
(08:09):
because they just have to try it for themselves. But
we kind of do this naturally as humans for some reason. Yeah,
And to be clear, I have no interest in traveling
out of my way to smell a corpse flower. But
it also feels to me like the Harry Potter jelly beans,
you know, where they It could be delightful or disgusting,
and either way, people are happy to have tried to.
You know, my kids love those things. Oh mine too.
(08:29):
Some of them are so gross. There were a couple
I honestly could not eat. Speaking of Harry Potter, Actually
do want to talk about the man breaks and some
of the other stuff from the books that exist in
real life. But before we do that, can we do
a quick section on I don't know, let's call the
Eddie Haskell plants. Why Eddie Haskell? Well, these are the
plants that seem totally harmless and kind of like goody
(08:49):
two shoes, but can actually be bad influences. Yeah, there
there are a lot of plants. I didn't realize we're dangerous.
Like there's the Laurel hedges, which always seems so running
the mill to me. They're actually in that point is
in garden we talked about at the top. Apparently when
people trimmed the hedges and take the clippings to the dump,
they've fallen asleep behind the wheel from the fumes. Oh wow,
All right, do you have anything that's maybe a little
more common than that though, Yeah, I've got a couple.
(09:11):
So rhubarb believes are apparently toxic. There's this terrific story
from a Great Britain in nineteen seventeen when a cook
used a recipe she found in the newspaper. It was
in this wartime tips column, and the combination of adding
baking soda to the rhubarb actually killed the minister she
was cooking for. It was super tragic. But apparently the
leaves can cause weakness and difficulty breathing on their own
(09:33):
and uh. And then there are things like cashews, you know,
but which I know you and I have talked about before.
But cashews, while they're totally delicious, the plant actually comes
from the same family as poison oak and ivy and
you actually have to steam them open to get to
the tasty truths. So even though you're getting them supposedly row,
they're actually coming to you a little cooked. But you know,
Amy Stewart tells this horrible story of a little league
(09:54):
game in Pennsylvania where they sold some cashews that had
pieces of a shell in them, and this law huge
percentage of the little league parents ended up with rashes
on their arms and armpits and buttocks for the fruit.
I don't know. I don't know why buttocks these people
put in their cashews. But my favorite deceptively nice plant
that's actually not worth hanging out with. Celery. What's what's
(10:15):
so bad about celery? Well, nothing in small doses. But
if you eat a pound of it and then go
to a tanning salt, the celery will actually make you
extremely sensitive to UV light and it can pigment your
skin color and give you blisters. I mean, if you're
going tanning, go light on the cellery. It's really good advice.
I'm glad we're here for our listeners, but that does
sound awful. All right, So we've done a few unhinged
(10:37):
plants that will pop off at you, some stinky plants
you'll probably know to avoid, and then those sneaky, silent
ones that are hiding a dark side. So how about
we save some of the liars, cheats and Harry Potter
plants for after a break. So at the top of
(10:58):
the show, we were talking about this incredib about Poisoned Garden,
and we're lucky today because we actually have the head
gardener at the Poisoned Garden. But Trevor Jones welcomed to
part time genius. Hello. All right, so one of our
favorite things is just the sign to the entrance that says,
these plants can kill and it's so ominous. What's the
philocity behind the garden and how do you choose what
(11:20):
plants go in there? The Duchess of Northumberland, who created
the hold of the garden, was fascinated with poisonous plants.
She felt that children these days tend to sit in
front of computer screens and look at them of our phones,
but never get out into the big wide world and
experience the environment that they're growing up in. So she
was aware that many children these days don't know the
(11:42):
harmful effects of plants, especially native plants that grow here
in the UK, but also some exotic ones, and so
part of the reasoning for the Poison Garden was to
capture the imagination of a child and teach them about
the harmful effects of plants and how they would all
kill you. So we have storytellers that build up a
(12:03):
huge drama before anybody actually enters, and you're warned not
to touch the plants, stand too close to them, smell them,
will definitely not taste them, because they all have the
ability to kill you. Well, speaking of children, I'm guessing
these plants are kind of like children, and that you
can't pick a favorite, but we're still going to ask
you anyway, do you have a favorite plant? There? I
(12:23):
like to tell the story of acrono item. It's a
cottage garden plant. It's her basis. It dives down the winter,
shoots up again in the spring, and it has fantastic,
deep blue flowers. It's often called monkshood because the flower
looks like an old fashioned monkshood. Now, the whole of
that plant is poisonous, but we relate it to an
(12:45):
up to date murder story because in two thousands and ten,
a woman called lack Finder Singh who had fallen out
with her lover. He had kicked her out of the
home that they shared, so to get revenge on him,
she found some aconite the police seed, and she crushed
it up and then went back into the house and
(13:05):
third into his curry which was in the fridge. He
then returned home from work with his new girlfriend and
ad to curry, and he died within thirty six hours.
And when toxicology reports came back, they said that it
was all down to aconite and poisoning, and they chased
it back to luck Finder and she's now in prison.
(13:25):
So when did it occur to you that being a
poison gardener could be a real job. Well, I came
to Annick ten years ago and I've never heard about
a collection of poisonous plants, although I've been in gardening
all my days until I got to Annek and then
the fascination that is all about the Poison Garden started
to infect me as well, and so I was very
(13:47):
keen on poisonous plants. And I'm curious, how did the
Harry Potter movies filming there change admissions to the garden.
We've had a spinoff from how He Potter film because
in how He pos talked about Man Drake, and so
we grow Man Drake in the Poison Garden because there's
a lot of superstition around Man Drake. At one time
that was more prized than gold for its magical properties,
(14:10):
and even today people will buy mandrake roots and chop
them up. It's supposed to be a very good affle
dizzy act, but I can't guarantee you now. But there's
a lot of superstition about the plant. And the plant
has a very strong, thick cap roots very much like
a carrot, but it forks, so it's often have two
(14:32):
stems to it, so when it gets dug up, it
can often look like a little man with two legs
and two arms, and they say that it's the devil himself.
And if you dig a mandrake up, you can actually
hear it's screaming as it comes up out of the ground.
And then when you see it, it does look like
a little like a little man. And so if you
do that, you're cursed. So the stories goes. If you
(14:55):
want to get rid of your man drake used to
have to tie a rope around the manre it itself
and then around donkey or a dog. Kick the donkey
or the dog and they would run off and they
would pull an and rake up and as it screamed,
so they heard the screaming, they were the culprit because
they pulled it up. The donkey or the dog was
cursed and you survived to tell the tale. What's the
(15:17):
best thing you overhear the gardens? Like, what's the most
satisfying part of the job in the poison garden. It's
relating the stories that we tell to everyday occurrences we
grow in the poison garden. We grow just common laurel
and a lot of our visitors will grow low as
a hedge. It's very very common evergreen plant, but it
(15:38):
has the ability to kill you, believe it or not,
because the laurel leaves um produce cyanide. So when you
cut your laurel hedge, if you accept up the clippings
and put them into your car to take them to
the dump, as you sit in your car, so the
cyanide will start to build up in the car. That
then affects your nervous system and it's starts the brain
(15:59):
of oxygen. And so many people don't be like that,
and lots of our visitors have told us that they
have start exactly that they's driven to the dump with
these cuttings in the back of their car and they've
got very light headed and one gentleman he is admitted
to crashing into a lamp post. It was all down
to cyanide poisoning. What's Trevor, I can't wait to get
(16:20):
over to the gardens. This has been fascinating and thanks
so much for joining us on Part Time Genius. Well pleasure,
welcome back to Part Time Genius. Today we've been thumbing
(16:41):
our way through a field guide of plants. Your mother
wouldn't approve of I knew all this talk of plants
and poisons has reminded me of that Debora Bloom story
and the roots of c s I. You know, that's
actually one of my favorite stories. But would you mind
telling it to our listeners. So Debora Blooms, this wonderful
journalist who wrote The Poisoner's Handbook. But in it she
tells this great story from Belgium. It's about poisoning by
(17:02):
nicotine in the eighteen fifties. So basically at the time
no one knew how to detect plant alkaloids from dead bodies.
And the way she tells that, there's a French prosecutor
and a famous death by morphine case, and he confirms
this in the trial and in the courtroom he said,
let us tell would be poisoners, use plant poisons, fear nothing.
(17:23):
Your crime will go unpunished. There's no physical evidence, it
cannot be found. I mean he was talking from a
point of frustration. But at least one person took his advice.
It was the Count of Boucarmi. So this is one
of those classic cases of people killing their relative for inheritance,
and the Count and Countess lived extravagantly. They were basically
like the FitzGeralds of their time, throwing outrageous parties and
(17:45):
living beyond their means. So they needed more cash, and
they knew that when the count as sickly brother passed away,
they'd inherit his loot, But it turns out he wasn't
dying fast enough, so they decided to speed up the process.
So the count started experience ending with nicotine poisoning. He
had this converted laundry shaw that he turned into a
lab and claimed he was using it to mix up perfumes.
(18:07):
But when his servants peek in, he's extracting things from
plants and has vials and burners set up in there,
and suddenly tiny dead animals starts showing up left outside
the lab. I mean, they saw dead birds, rabbits and
several other animals, which was of course suspicious to them,
and so they take note of this. And then the
couple had their in law over for dinner, and there's
(18:28):
more suspicious stuff that happens. Then they send the kids
away for dinner to eat elsewhere, which is pretty unusual
for them. The Countess insists on ladling out the food
herself and distributing the plates herself and the servants are
pointedly sent away, and then during the course of the meal,
her brother passes out with a thud. The count and
countess claim it's a stroke, but something fishy has clearly happened,
(18:52):
and they rinse his throat with vinegar and burned the
dead man's clothes and basically get rid of all the evidence,
which sounds so shady, right, I know, But here's the
genius of it and why plant poisoning used to work
so well. The nicotine is made up of super simple
organic materials. It's just carbon and nitrogen and hydrogen and
you know, all the stuff that's in the air and
in our bodies. But it's also a super effective poison
(19:15):
that works astonishingly well and at high speeds when it's
in high doses. And so the servants report the case,
and the police knew who did it, but have zero proof.
Then Belgian's most famous chemist, Jeane sarves Stas, who spends
three months figuring out how to pull alkaloids from preserved tissues,
and he finally uses the proof to convince a judge
(19:35):
of their guilt, and the justice is swift, but The
crazy part is that while Stas's process has been updated,
according to Bloom, it's still used in toxicology labs today. Crazy.
It really is kind of the rut of CSID. But
what's the moral of all this? I guess the moral
would be, you know, don't use plants to murder your
friends and family. And maybe more than that, don't murder.
(19:57):
That would be that the moral don't murder does like
smart words to live by, and uh, you know what's funny.
Amy Stewart makes this point in the book that poisons
are all around us, like a lot of common house
plants are poisonous. The peace lily, the philodendron. I mean,
we had both of those in our home growing up.
And the truth is you probably wouldn't eat much of
either because they'd make your mouth burned before you'd scarf
(20:18):
down too much. Well, what's interesting is that most house
plants were never chosen for their safety. They were chosen
because they thrive year round in a fifty to seventy
degree climate, you know, the same temperature as our homes,
which is why many of them are actually tropical plants
from South American and African jungles. I mean that's something
I never considered. Yeah, me either. But I think we've
gotten a little off topic here, so let's let's get
(20:39):
back to some of those plants your mom doesn't want
you playing with. I have to be I love that
squirting cucumber plant. You got any more like that? Yeah?
So there are two other plants I flagged. The first
one is called the African milk tree, and it's disgusting
because if you don't prune it carefully, it can squirt.
The African milk sapp at get big with the squirts.
I guess you took that requests the most terrifying. And
(21:01):
there's this one scientist who's pruning his tree and he
got it right in the eye and he used to
have like vision in the eye, and then he went
legally blind and that sounds terrible. But after a rigorous
course of sailing that he gave himself for ten days,
his eye went back to being, which I thought was crazy.
That it causes this temporary blindness that you can come
back from. Wow, that's wild, all right. And and the
(21:22):
other one, Yeah, so this one's totally amazing and also
temporarily takes away from one of your abilities. But it's
called the dumb cane. As Amy Stewart puts a quote,
this tropical South American plant is well known for its
ability to temporarily inflame vocal cords, leaving people completely unable
to speak. And that does sound like something out of
Harry Potter, and we did promise to talk about her, definitely,
(21:45):
So it's like straight out of the Charms and Potions
books or any of Professor Sprouts lessons. But before we
get into that, the plant diffian Bakia has one more
unusual side effect. In the Caribbean, men used to chew
it as a male contraceptive, really because they ust their
ability to smooth talk women or something. No, it actually
has nothing to do with them losing their voice. There's
some sort of historical preparation that we don't know about
(22:07):
that people used to use to make sure they didn't
have kids, and it was kind of like an early
version of the male pill. It supposedly lasted forty eight hours.
But what's weirder is that the Nazis actually started playing
with the plant in the hopes that they could make
certain populations sterile, and luckily they could never get enough
of the plant to really experiment on. That's really creepy,
but I do love the idea of plants with superpowers.
(22:30):
All right, what other Harry Potter type plants. Well, there's
also the Man Drake, which Trevor talked about earlier on
at Hogwarts. Mandrakes are one of those plants that are
always wailing and whining. Would they get pulled out of
the soil and they shriek at these high pitched volumes.
But I had no idea. That was like a myth
from medieval times, And in fact, Austin told me that
the preferred method for uprooting Man Drake was to use
(22:51):
a rope and tie it to a dog and then
just leave, and when the dog finally pulled away, the
man Drake would get uprooted. But there was this idea
that even the dog might die from doing the uprooting,
which I just think that's the worst possible way. Yeah,
let's not do it that way. So um any Stewart
actually has another story about the plant, and that's that
(23:11):
Hannibal used to leave Mandrake confused wines for his enemies,
which would intoxicate them and give them hallucinations, and then
you'd come back to easily defeat them when they were
drunk and drugged. Of course, the fact that he used
to ride and on giant elephants probably only made those
hallucinations were so I'm guessing. Yeah. So there's some other
plants that get shout outs in Harry Potter, like monks Hood,
which is actually a toxic plant that gardeners need gloves
(23:34):
to handle. But I kind of love the plants that
cure things. And one I found completely fascinating is the
ordeal beans. Oh I know about these? Aren't these the
truth telling beans? Like I think I read that if
you swallow the beans and vomited, you were considered innocent,
but if you ate the beans and died, then you
were guilty. Yes, this perverse logic, and it was kind
of like at the Salem witch trials, where if you're
(23:55):
thrown in a river and drown, you were innocent, but
if you floated you were definitely a witch. But doesn't.
What's fascinating about these beans to me. What's crazy is
that the beans are actually an antidote or a cure
for mandrake poisoning, Like if you've been poisoned by man
drake in an emergency room, they can actually use these
beans to restore heartbeats and snap people back into consciousness.
That is incredible. All right. So, so we've covered the
(24:17):
Eddie Haskell's the stink weeds, and now we've covered some
of the plants your mom might worry or two into
fantasy or something. I guess those are the uh let's
call those the comic concept. But I think it's time
to get to talk about one we've been waiting for.
And these are the bad boys of plant life, the
liars and the cheats and the overseex plants that are
a little too salacious for their own good until I'm
ready for this, right all right, So before we get
(24:39):
to those, how but we take a little break, all right, man.
This is a special treat today because usually our quiz
takers join us by phone, but today our guests are
here in studio with us. We have the hosts of
one of my favorite shows called Food Stuff here at
(25:00):
How Stuff Works, Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to
part time Genius. Thanks for having yeah, thank you so much.
All right, So, again, like I mentioned, this is one
of my favorite shows and it's so fun because it's
not just history and science it's like all of this
combined in a way that I haven't heard many food
shows doing. And I was curious to hear from you guys.
You know what gave you the idea to start the show? Well,
(25:22):
first of all, all hush and and second of all, Um,
I don't know. We love food. Yeah, we're kind of
super nerds about it. Yeah. Annie in particular, I think
the day that I realized that I wanted her on
the show, Um, I came to her, it was like, please,
we had the show. I need a co host. And
it's so terrific. Was we were out in in Austin
at south By Southwest and she had planned months in advance,
(25:46):
like and like put in orders for barbecue places and
like had this entire map of everywhere that we needed
to go to eat in the sea and I was
like this one, Like this is I call it maximizing.
I like to maximize my experience when I visited city,
and uh, we had such a good time. We tried
so much good food. Yeah. We get so excited about
(26:07):
all the research because every episode has a fact that
I just would never have never have guests. Yea, it's
so interesting through food science. I feel a little bit
less like a you know, mad scientist in training. Right,
how do you guys come up with the topics? Obviously
there are a lot of foods out there, but how
do you decide which ones to focus on? We do
get a lot of requests in from listeners and those
(26:28):
are tremendously helpful, like stuff that we wouldn't necessarily have
thought to do. But also it's just like we'll run
across stuff. You know, what was it this week? Aspects? Aspects? Oh,
I went on such a rabbit hole about as it's
a meat gelatine. Um, these were really big in like
the nineteen sixties or so. It's a jelly mold that's savory,
(26:49):
made of usually like bone broth a k A stock
as they call it in the industry, and that that'll
set up into a good solid mold and it's usually
got like bits of meat and egg and vegetable and
off in it. It's they look they look like they're
from a hell dimension. Yeah, I mean, I mean they're
supposedly delicious. They made me laugh alout just looking at
(27:11):
the picture. Highly recommends to go down a similar rabbit hole. Well,
for our listeners, there have been great episodes on Bloody
Mary's Fried Chicken, Honey, the Weird History of the Graham Cracker,
which is I expected it to be a great episode
and it was so so it's always a lot of fun.
Part of the reason we wanted to have you on
today though, as you did uh an episode recently about
(27:33):
the tomato and you know we're doing this episode on
dangerous and poisonous plans. You guys have talked about how
Europeans for for a long time thought that tomatoes were poisonous.
I thought it gets you guys to explain why that
was certainly wealthy Europeans. I think that the poorer folks
were just like, it's a food, you should eat it, right, Well,
(27:53):
wealthier Europeans like to eat off of these fancy pewter plates,
especially at the time this was around the f fifteen
or sixteen hundreds m h. And tomatoes have a lot
of acid, and so the acid would cause um, lead
to leak out of the pewter plates and could lead
to lead poisoning, which can lead to death. Yeah, a
(28:13):
legitimate reason for being afraid. Also, um, they were kind
of tomatoes were kind of poorly classified or unfortunately classified. Yeah,
correctly classified but as a night shade, which is a
type of poisonous plant in some cases. Yes. Uh. And
from that, yes, um, they were called um lego persicons.
(28:36):
That's how they were classified, which translates the Greek word
is wolf peach. Right. And part of the reason they
were called that is because they were in the night
shaded family and related to wolf spane, which people thought
at the time could summon were wolves. Oh nice, So
you got to talk about were wolves. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
(28:57):
that's so exciting. Yeah, as a love of the title
of episode, right, it was you say, Tomato, I say,
and wolf spaine in nightshade do have hallucinogenic qualities. So
so it's easy to see where people might think that
where wolves are involved, if they're hanging out around too
much wolf spain. Right. But that is really interesting to
imagine that that those that had much less money wouldn't
(29:19):
have thought of them as as being poisonous because they
wouldn't have had that introduction of yeah, so the fancy
pewter plates, and they wouldn't have gotten that taxonomy lesson.
So yeah, yeah, rich people would keep them on their
tables as like ornaments, as like goth table decoration, like
they thought that they were poisonous and they would have
them as these table centerpieces. Yeah, well, very cool. That
(29:42):
that made us think we should have you guys on
the show. We've been wanting to have you here anyway,
so it was a good excuse to get you here
to play this very very important quiz. What quiz are
we going to have these guys play today? Super important?
It's called real name of a mushroom or a band
that's playing south By Southwest this year, so they're the
south By Connection again. So there are tons of names
(30:02):
of mushrooms that are really quirking strange, like scurfy twiglet
and fingered candle snuff names of actual mushrooms. Does that
make you hungry? Yeah, so we thought it'd be fun
to have you come on and work together. We're gonna
have you work together because your teammates too. I can
see how you do in a five question quiz. Okay,
number one, Potato earth Ball. Is this a real mushroom
(30:26):
or the name of a band playing at south By
Southwest this year? Potato earth Since since it's got the
earth element to it, I would say I would say
it's an actual mushroom. I agree. Yeah, Wow, these guys
are good, right. It's a holy puffball mushroom? Is that
(30:47):
from a description? The sexy shape of potatoes? Sees there?
One for one? Number two snake tongue truffle club that
sounds like a bar option. Um, I think I think
(31:10):
drinking was involved in that one, though, So I'm going
to go with band. Do you would you agree? Yeah?
I think that's a band. I'm glad we stumped him
on at least one. Well, it was named in the UK,
so there might have been some drinking in It actually
looks like a big snake tongue sticking out of the ground.
(31:31):
Number three a yucky duster, yucky duster, and he's making
the most amazing face right now. I'm going to say
that either if it is a band, it's also poisonous.
I'm gonna go with mushroom. Oh wow, we got him again. Dang,
(31:51):
it's a band. It's a four person band that sounds
completely different depending on which member wrote the song. Oh
all right, here we go. You still have as for
the big Price. Number four pancake Crust. We're trying so
hard to not just like snort after every name we're hearing. Yeah,
(32:12):
oh goodness. I mean that could certainly describe the skin
on the top of I mean, I feel like I've
seen that thing before. Well, I'll trust your judgment on
that one. It's a real funny say infects a stone
fruit trees. Nicely done. Okay, this is the big one
for the big prize. Number five, Delicate Steve, Delicate Steve
(32:35):
mushroom or a banded south By Well, delicate Steve certainly
sounds like a band that I I've seen four It
sounds like some band members that I think many different Steves.
They're all delicate. They're all delicate. Sorry about its Steve's
So they're going with band? What do you think? You're right?
It's a band from New Jersey, which shouldn't be confused
(32:57):
with a slow Steve. A band from Berlin that's also
playing out going there, oh man. So, so how did
they do today? Mango? They did so great, we're gonna
give him a prize. So today they're going home with
there's an actual prize of Rockabye, Baby Lullabye renditions of
(33:17):
justin timber Lakes justin timber Lake c D. I had
on my desk, oh Man, it's the only one. Good
luck finding a place to play a CD. Yeah, I
have to fight over this. Yeah, definitely, that's all right. Well,
I hope all our listeners will check out food Stuff.
It's a terrific show. Lauren and Annie, thanks so much
for joining us. Oh, thank you guys so much. Thank
you for having us so mago. We were just about
(33:52):
to talk about some of the liars and the sexpots
and you know, the plants your mother definitely doesn't want
you hanging out with. So who's your favorite liar in
the mix? Yeah, there's definitely some crafty greenery out there,
just spinning lies and trying to get their seed into
the wild. But I think my favorite ones are the
ones that trick insects. So there's an orchid that's apparently
so sexy that wasts tried to mate with it, and
(34:14):
it isn't just romance. It's like aggressive wasp sex, and
the dumb male wasps gets so excited they get covered
in pollen and then move on to another orchid, spreading
the pollen along the way. But the best and weirdest
part is that the orchids are so good at their
deception that male wasps actually prefer the flowers to females,
and sometimes they'll leave a female wasp mid population because
(34:35):
the flower seems that much more appealing. So I don't
think you said, what what it's called. What's it called? Yeah,
it's called the tongue orchid, which is which is gross.
And wow, that's a good one, all right, So what
else you got, Well, this one's hilarious. While impersonating an
insect is one thing, impersonating a piece of dung is
a totally different level. But that's what the restiness say.
I don't think I'm pronouncing that right, But it's from
(34:56):
South Africa and it does this when it drops seeds
that look suspiciously like antelope dung on the ground. Wow,
So they just are they marking their territory. It's so
much more than that. So basically, the seeds attract dung beetles,
which just saunter up the seed and roll it around.
And when they decided to burrow into it, instead of
getting a delicious treat, they discovered that they've been tricked
into planning a seed in the ground. All right, that's
(35:19):
pretty genius. But that's a common survival strategy, right, Well,
I mean it's common enough that has a name. It's
called fecal mimoric carrey. Alright, so we probably need to
wrap this up it. How about you send us off
with one last plant that baffled you. Yeah, so I
think I have just the one. So here's one that
mother definitely wouldn't approve of, which scientists are just completely
delighted by. It's an orchid called the halka glossom amasanium,
(35:42):
which is this bisexual flower. Well this sounds juicy, okay,
go on, Yeah, so basically the plant works against gravity
to pollinate itself. But let me just quote new scientists
because they do a way better job of explaining it.
Although many plants self fertilize, a rare orchid that grows
on tree trunks in China takes the process to hitherto
unknown heights through a gymnastic feat never seen before in plants.
(36:04):
It bends its pollen containing male another round through a
full circle before jabbing it into the female stigma to
complete fertilization at sixty days. The act takes even longer
than tantric sex. This basically flower point. I kind of
feel dirty listening to that. I mean, what's crazy is
that the plant can basically self pollinate without any of
the standard means insects when gravity, rain, none of that.
(36:28):
It's kind of insane that it does it all on
its own. But you know one thing we could never
do on our own, I do the part time genius
fact off. Yeah, let's go for it. M R. Did
(36:49):
you know that you don't need those little flower chemical
packets to make your flowers perk up? A little viagora
will make the flower stems straighten up fast. According to
Business Insider, auguste, teen seventy seven set the record for
the most flowers sold in the US on a single day.
What happened? It was the day after Elvis passed away.
Oh that's crazy, all right? What did you know that
venus fly traps amid a fluorescent blue light to attract bugs. Also,
(37:13):
they're the official state carnivorous plan of North Carolina? I mean,
what else is North Carolina going to give it to?
Speaking of carnivorous plants, did you know figs aren't considered vegetarian.
Figs are pollinated by wasps and then the flower captures
and traps them. So there's wasps that's been coughton digested
in most figs eat, which is funny to think that
figs aren't vegetarian while oysters might be. I mean, according
(37:35):
to some vegans and vegetarians at least, it's because they
don't experience pain. But that's not my fact. That's not
the fact. Did you know that plants can hear water?
I thought I thought that was just like an old
wives tale. I used to think that too, but scientific
American and a professor from Australia proved me wrong. Was
Professor Monica Gagliano, and she devised an experiment with pea
seedlings where plants inch their way towards pipes, and she
(37:58):
theorized that while the plants later followed moisture grades, they
were initially drawn to the water sources by sound waves
from inside the pipes. That's amazing. So I'm gonna have
to let you take home the trophy today. Thanks, and
I think that's it for today's episode of Part Time Genius.
Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part
(38:27):
Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and
wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
important things. We couldn't even begin to understand Chris and
McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
song and does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Coo gets the
(38:49):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
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