When Just A Scratch Was A Deadly Blow.

            Many plants park a powerful dose of poison, a fact known since earliest times. The ancient Greeks used infusion of aconite, an extract from the roots of monkshood (wolfsbane), to dispose of the aged and infirm. Spears dipped in aconite were deadly weapon in many ancient battles, causing sever and often fatal poisoning from just a scratch.        

            Until recent times, natives of Java used to smear hunting arrows with the deadly sap of the upas tree. Amazonian tribesmen coat their arrowheads in curate, which they get by boiling the bark of the pareira vine Chandrodendron tomentosum. Some East African tribesmen dip arrows in a toxin held in the wood and roots of Acokanthera plants. The poison also provides a crafty way to kill enemies. The spiny fruit of Tribulus terrestris, a form of caltrops are soaked in toxins and scattered along a likely path. A barefoot victim may scarcely notice the fatal prick, ant the tribe probably decides that death was from natural causes.

            Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian broadcaster in the BBC’s external service, dies mysteriously in London in September 1978, after being prodded accidently. It seemed at first – with another pedestrian’s umbrella. Investigators decided he’d been murdered. The umbrella spike, they deduced, carried a shot of ricin, a deadly derivative of the castor-oil plant.  Most of the people know that some mushrooms are highly toxic. Without swift medical attention eating the cap Amanita phalloides is fatal in 50% of cases, but for its grim effects, a microscopic fungus called ergot is in a class of its own. The fungus sometimes infects rye. Bread made from the rye is poisonous.

            In AD 994 some 40000 people died in France from ergot poisoning. At the time, it was believed a deadly plague had swept the land. Those who sought sanctuary in monasteries and convents survived because monks and nuns made bread from wheat flour. A peculiar form of madness overcame visitors to the German town of Aachen in 1374. They had survived there to celebrate the mid-summer feast of St John, and for no reason started top dance. Foaming at the mouth, they dance until they dropped. In the nest 50yrs, dancing mania spread. Many Historians today believed that rye bread infected with the ergot fungus as to blame. Some say that it caused the famous trials at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, after which fourteen women, mostly teenagers and five men, all of whom had hallucinations, were hanged as witches.

            Plant poisons come from many sources. The toxin in a cup of apple seeds could kill a man; surprisingly some creatures don’t suffer the poison’s effect. A tiny slug can eat a whole death-cap mushrooms that could kill at least three men. Cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli are highly toxic to most insects, but give a feast to aphids and caterpillars of the cabbage-white butterfly. Some animals have adapted to plants toxins. Grazing animals and most insets avoid the bitter poison of milkweed, but caterpillars of the monarch butterfly feed on it, storing the toxin in special tissues. Bird predators ignore the monarch, because they have learned that its stored poisons will make them vomit.