My husband bought this neat book for me called Wicked Plants. He knows that I like plants even though I have never really had much of a chance to grow them.

Wicked Plants contains information about plants that kill, maim, and intoxicate and they may be lurking in your backyard. It talks about plants such as those in the nightshade family which are known for causing hallucinations, seizures, delirium and deadly comas. It is a very interesting book.

Some surprising members of the nightshade family are potatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes. The fruit and leaves of potatoes are poisonous, but the tuber is edible. Other more poisonous members of this family include the narcotic mandrake, tobacco, henbane, belladonna, and datura. These plants are poisonous because many of them contain tropane alkaloids, organic compounds that contain basic nitrogen and are not directly involved in the growth, reproduction, and development of an organism. They are often involved in plant defense against herbivory.

It is best to stay clear of unfamiliar plants that produce a small, round fruit and have the general growth habit of a tomato or eggplant. Plants in this family such as mandrake have such a nasty reputation. There are also numerous legends of the plants having roots that are actually small humans that will emit a blood curdling scream and put a curse on you if you pull them out of the ground.     

A few flowers that grow in a garden that one must be careful not to ingest are the Christmas rose (Helleborus spp.), foxglove (Digitalis spp.), daphne (Daphne spp.), and lantana (Lantana spp.). Ingesting the Christmas rose can lead to burning in the mouth, vomiting, dizziness, nervous system depression, and convulsions.

Foxglove can irritate the skin, upset the stomach, cause delirium, tremors, convulsions, headaches, and fatal heart problems.

Daphne can cause internal bleeding, weakness, irritation of the throat, vomiting, and could kill a child who accidently ingests its berries.

Finally, lobelia can cause heart problems, vomiting, tremors, and paralysis and they are often found in butterfly gardens.

Therefore, if one were to grow any of these plants as ornamentals in their gardens, the gardener should be sure to know what to do in case of an emergency where someone accidentally ingests the fruits, leaves, or petals of one of these plants.

Plants that are often found in bouquets and are toxic include lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) and bleeding heart (Dicentra spp.). Lilly-of-the-valley is a beautifully fragrant plant that contains cardiac glycosides which cause headache, nausea, and heart failure. Bleeding hearts contain toxic alkaloids that could cause nausea, seizures, and respiratory problems.  

Some interesting carnivorous plants are pitcher plants (Nepenthes spp., Sarracenia spp.) and Venus flytraps. Pitcher plants grow where I live. They use their colors to attract insects into the flute of the plant, where they drown in the digestive juices in the lower regions of the plants.

The Venus flytraps attracts insects with its nectar and, once the fly wonders inside the leaves, they close, glands secret digestive juices and the insect drowns.