Maybe something you don't know about me is I'm a bit obsessed with poisonous plants & mushrooms. My alter ego lives on the edge of the woods and is prone to fits of maniacal laughter while gardening. I sparkle for aconitum (aka aconite). I swoon for amanita (esp muscaria). I snuggle up to hedges of yew.

All the lovely flowers we don't think of as poisonous - daffodil, lily of the valley, hydrangea, delphinium, heather, foxglove - when I have gardens they are full of them. Beauty & death: my kind of combo.

I'm not saying poisons are good. Don't poison people. Poisoning people is bad. Just enjoy the potential shining through the veins of those graceful petals, hidden in that sweet scent. Ignore the twinkle in my alter ego's eyes.


Background (not light reading):

* Hemlock in honey is a recipe attributed to Canidia, an elderly woman of the Roman Empire who advised on poisoning. She was one of the big three female poisoners of the Roman Empire: Canidia, Martina, and Locusta

* La Toffana was Giulia Toffana, Naples, d 1723 (age 70), who made and sold professionally (along with her daughter) aqueta or Aqua Toffana (likely including arsenic and belladonna), which was packaged in bottles with the stamp of a saint and sold as magic secretions from said saint’s tomb. She admitted – under torture – to having helped more than 600 wives poison their husbands in her lifetime, but there’s no way to know for sure. La Toffana was known as a woman of great godliness, but was executed along with her daughter, and her body was thrown over the wall of the nunnery that had protected her

* La Voisin was Catherine Deshayes, Madame Montvoison, Paris, d 1680 (age 39), known particularly for her abortifacients and her nobility clientele, high priestess of Christian congregations whose powers she saw as a gift from God, convicted as a witch and serial poisoner. One of Louis XIV’s mistresses, the Marquise of Montespan, was likely one of her clients but La Voisin would not admit to it, even under torture. This potential threat to the monarchy jumpstarted the Chambre Ardente (the Burning Chamber), a court specifically commissioned to root out witchcraft and poisoners in Paris. La Voisin was burned at the stake

Further reading:

1) David Stuart's book, "Dangerous Garden: the quest for plants to change our lives" (London: 2004)

2) Benedetta Faedi Duramy’s article in the Chicago-Kent Law Review, “Women and Poisons in 17th Century France” (April 2012)

3) University of California's list of toxic garden plants ucanr.edu/sites/poisonous_safe_plants/Toxic_Plants_by_Scientific_Name_685/