Wicked Plants Read Free Page A

painful jab in the back of his thigh and turned around in time to see a man pick up an umbrella, mumble an apology, and run away. Over the next few days, he developed a fever, had trouble speaking, began throwing up blood, and finally went to the hospital, where he died.
    FAMILY :
Euphorbiaceae
    HABITAT :
Warm, mild winter climates, rich soil, sunny areas
    NATIVE TO :
Eastern Africa, parts of western Asia
    COMMON NAMES :
Palma Christi, ricin
    The pathologist found hemorrhages in almost every organ in his body. He also found a small puncture mark on Markov’s thigh and a tiny metal pellet in his leg. The pellet contained ricin, the poisonous extract of the castor bean plant. Although KGB agents were suspected of the crime, no one has ever been charged with the infamous “umbrella murder.”
    Castor bean is a dramatic annual or tender perennial shrub with deeply lobed leaves, prickly seedpods, and large, speckled seeds. Some of the more popular garden varieties sport red stems and splashes of burgundy on the leaves. The plant can reach over ten feet tall in a single growing season and will grow into a substantial bush if it is not killed by a winter freeze. Onlythe seeds are poisonous. Three or four of them can kill a person, although people do survive castor seed poisoning, either because the seeds aren’t well chewed or because they are purged quickly.
    Although KGB agents were suspected of the crime, no one has ever been charged with the infamous “umbrella murder.”
    Castor oil has been a popular home remedy for centuries. (The ricin is removed during the manufacturing process.) A spoonful of the oil is an effective laxative. Castor oil packs are used externally to soothe sore muscles and inflammation. It’s also used in cosmetics and other products.
    But even this natural vegetable oil is not entirely benign: in the 1920s Mussolini’s thugs used to round up dissidents and pour castor oil down their throats, inflicting a nasty case of diarrhea on them. Sherwood Anderson described the castor oil torture this way: “It was amusing to see Fascisti, wearing black shirts and looking very earnest, bottles sticking out of their hip pockets, chasing wildly down the street after a shrieking Communist. Then the capture, the terrible assault, hurling the luckless Red to the sidewalk, injecting the bottle into his mouth to the muffled accompaniment of blasphemy of all the gods and devils in the universe.”
    Meet the Relatives    The garden spurge called euphorbia, known for its irritating sap; the poinsettia, also mildly irritating but, contrary to rumor, not dangerous; and the rubber tree,
Hevea brasiliensis
, source of natural rubber, are all related to the castor bean.

DEADLY

ORDEAL POISONS
    Among nineteenth-century European explorers a story circulated about the existence of a West African bean that could determine a person’s guilt or innocence. According to local custom, the accused would swallow the bean, and what happened next would determine the outcome of the trial. If he vomited the bean, he was innocent, and if he died, he was guilty and got what he deserved. A third alternative existed: he could purge the nut, or evacuate it through his bowels, in which case he was also determined guilty and sold into slavery as punishment. (A thriving slave trade dating back to the early 1500s facilitated this quirk in the West African criminal justice system.)

    This practice was known as trial by ordeal, and plants used for the trials were called ordeal beans. Several plants were used; judges could choose a less toxic plant when they wanted to influence the outcome in favor of the accused.

CALABAR BEAN
Physostigma venenosum
    The ordeal poison of choice, the Calabar bean flourishes in warm, tropical climates; reaches up to fifty feet in height; and produces lovely red blossoms like those of the scarlet runner bean, followed by long, fat seed-pods and hefty dark brown beans.
    The alkaloid physostigmine is responsible