low-growing evergreen perennial that attracts butterflies and blooms all summer long in shades of red, orange, and purple. The berries contain the highest level of toxins while they are still green. If ingested, the berries can cause visual problems, weakness, vomiting, heart problems, and death.
LOBELIA
Lobelia
spp.
The
Lobelia
genus contains a number of beloved garden plants, including the compact, brilliant blue
L. erinus
, a bedding annual that spills out of containers; the spiky bright red
L. cardinalis
, which thrives in marshes; and the tropical
L. tupa
, often called devil’s tobacco. One species,
L. inflate
, or Indian tobacco, has also earned the names pokeweed and vomitwort. The poisons in lobelia, called lobelamine and lobeline, are similar to nicotine and can cause heart problems, vomiting, tremors, and paralysis if ingested.
YELLOW JESSAMINE OR CAROLINA JESSAMINE
Gelsemium sempervirens
An evergreen vine native to the American Southwest. The bright yellow, trumpet-shaped, fragrant flowers make it a popular climber and groundcover, and it has been adopted as the state flower of South Carolina. All parts of the plant are poisonous. Children have died from mistaking the plant for honeysuckle and sucking the nectar out of the flowers. Both pollen and nectar can be toxic to bees who visit the plant too frequently when no other flowers are available.
ILLEGAL
Opium Poppy
PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM
The opium poppy is the only Schedule II narcotic (defined as having a high potential for abuse but can still be prescribed) that you can order through a garden catalog, find at a nursery, buy in a floral arrangement, or enjoy in your own flower bed. While possession of opium poppy plants or poppy straw is strictly illegal, most local law enforcement officers will admit that they have bigger problems on their hands than a few pink or purple flowers in Grandma’s garden. Only the seeds of this plant are legal to possess, in recognition of the fact that they are a popular food ingredient.
FAMILY:
Papaveraceae
HABITAT:
Temperate climates, sun, rich garden soil
NATIVE TO:
Europe and western Asia
COMMON NAMES:
Breadseed poppy, peony poppy, Turkish poppy, “hens and chicks” poppy
Experienced gardeners have no trouble distinguishing the opium poppy from its non-narcotic cousins. The plant’s smooth, bluish green leaves; enormous pink, purple, white, or red petals; and fat blue-green seedpods give it away. When the flesh of freshly harvested seedpods is scored with a knife, a milky sap oozes out. That sap produces opium, which contains morphine, codeine, and other opiates used as painkillers.
Papaver somniferum
has been cultivated in the Middle East since about 3400 BC. Homer’s
Odyssey
mentions an elixir callednepenthe that allowed Helen of Troy to forget her sorrows; many scholars believe that nepenthe was an opium-based drink. In 460 BC, Hippocrates championed opium as a painkiller. Records of its use as a recreational drug date back to the Middle Ages.
Homer’s
Odyssey
mentions an elixir called nepenthe that allowed Helen of Troy to forget her sorrows; many scholars believe that nepenthe was opium based.
It was combined with a few other ingredients and distributed as a medication called laudanum in the seventeenth century. Doctors extracted morphine from the plant in the early nineteenth century. But the drug company Bayer introduced the most popular extract in 1898 when it created a much more powerful drug from the poppy. The name it coined for its new product? Heroin. Bayer sold it as a cough syrup for children and adults, but it was only on the market for about ten years. Still, the drug-using crowd caught on and started taking heroin recreationally.
An alarming increase in heroin use led the U.S. government to clamp down, and by 1923 it was banned altogether. However, heroin use only continued to grow, and today 3.5 million Americans report having used the drug at some point in their lifetime. The World
LOBELIA
Lobelia
spp.
The
Lobelia
genus contains a number of beloved garden plants, including the compact, brilliant blue
L. erinus
, a bedding annual that spills out of containers; the spiky bright red
L. cardinalis
, which thrives in marshes; and the tropical
L. tupa
, often called devil’s tobacco. One species,
L. inflate
, or Indian tobacco, has also earned the names pokeweed and vomitwort. The poisons in lobelia, called lobelamine and lobeline, are similar to nicotine and can cause heart problems, vomiting, tremors, and paralysis if ingested.
YELLOW JESSAMINE OR CAROLINA JESSAMINE
Gelsemium sempervirens
An evergreen vine native to the American Southwest. The bright yellow, trumpet-shaped, fragrant flowers make it a popular climber and groundcover, and it has been adopted as the state flower of South Carolina. All parts of the plant are poisonous. Children have died from mistaking the plant for honeysuckle and sucking the nectar out of the flowers. Both pollen and nectar can be toxic to bees who visit the plant too frequently when no other flowers are available.
ILLEGAL
Opium Poppy
PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM
The opium poppy is the only Schedule II narcotic (defined as having a high potential for abuse but can still be prescribed) that you can order through a garden catalog, find at a nursery, buy in a floral arrangement, or enjoy in your own flower bed. While possession of opium poppy plants or poppy straw is strictly illegal, most local law enforcement officers will admit that they have bigger problems on their hands than a few pink or purple flowers in Grandma’s garden. Only the seeds of this plant are legal to possess, in recognition of the fact that they are a popular food ingredient.
FAMILY:
Papaveraceae
HABITAT:
Temperate climates, sun, rich garden soil
NATIVE TO:
Europe and western Asia
COMMON NAMES:
Breadseed poppy, peony poppy, Turkish poppy, “hens and chicks” poppy
Experienced gardeners have no trouble distinguishing the opium poppy from its non-narcotic cousins. The plant’s smooth, bluish green leaves; enormous pink, purple, white, or red petals; and fat blue-green seedpods give it away. When the flesh of freshly harvested seedpods is scored with a knife, a milky sap oozes out. That sap produces opium, which contains morphine, codeine, and other opiates used as painkillers.
Papaver somniferum
has been cultivated in the Middle East since about 3400 BC. Homer’s
Odyssey
mentions an elixir callednepenthe that allowed Helen of Troy to forget her sorrows; many scholars believe that nepenthe was an opium-based drink. In 460 BC, Hippocrates championed opium as a painkiller. Records of its use as a recreational drug date back to the Middle Ages.
Homer’s
Odyssey
mentions an elixir called nepenthe that allowed Helen of Troy to forget her sorrows; many scholars believe that nepenthe was opium based.
It was combined with a few other ingredients and distributed as a medication called laudanum in the seventeenth century. Doctors extracted morphine from the plant in the early nineteenth century. But the drug company Bayer introduced the most popular extract in 1898 when it created a much more powerful drug from the poppy. The name it coined for its new product? Heroin. Bayer sold it as a cough syrup for children and adults, but it was only on the market for about ten years. Still, the drug-using crowd caught on and started taking heroin recreationally.
An alarming increase in heroin use led the U.S. government to clamp down, and by 1923 it was banned altogether. However, heroin use only continued to grow, and today 3.5 million Americans report having used the drug at some point in their lifetime. The World
Similar Books
