by Janet Grischy

Created on: May 28, 2009

Toxicity in plants is often a matter of application and degree. Many plant medicines derive from deadly poisons, and many medicines are poisons if overused. Poisons also have their uses in the world.

Foxglove

Digitalis, foxglove, grows in many gardens. Its tall spikes of purple, rose, or white tubular flowers add drama and focus to many borders. The plant is also hardy, at least in central California, and as invasive as can be. It gave medicine one of the first cardiac remedies, slowing and strengthening the heartbeat and preventing atrial fibrillation. Digitalis has lengthened many lives, while enlivening the garden. One warning sign of digitalis poisoning, supposed to occur with ingestion of the minutest bit of plant matter, is a yellow-green tinge to the vision.

Buckeye

The Buckeye, Aesculus Californicus, is a tree or bush of almost magical beauty. It leafs out and flowers in early spring, the cone-shaped pink-tinged blossoms flooding the neighborhood with a delicate scent. It also is the first tree to drop its leaves in summer, baring twisted silver limbs to decorate the paths through California woodlands. It carries a poison so powerful that it is said to poison the honey of any bees that gather its nectar. Some tribes, the Zayante among them, used buckeye poison to catch fish, by powdering the large chestnut-like seeds and dropping them in pools. Stunned fish would float to the top of the water. In hard times, various tribes ate the buckeye itself, leaching out the poison first by soaking.

Belladonna

The Belladonna plant, Atropa belladonna, is known in the American west as Deadly Nightshade. It is a weedy looking plant with small black berries. Its poison, atropine, is actually gathered from many plants of this species. All are solanum, a group which also includes eggplants and potatoes. Atropine is still used to treat heart trouble, and sometimes in certain types of glaucoma. Cleopatra used it to dilate the pupils of her eyes, which was then believed to add allure. It was also used as an ordeal drug by several American tribes, though this atropine was generally derived from jimsonweed.

Chrysanthemum

Some chrysanthemums bear a useful poison. The variety Pyrethrum, Chrysanthemum cinerariaefolium, is the source of an effective natural insecticide, pyrethrin. This preparation poisons all insects, and in lower concentrations seems to repel mosquitoes and their many kin, but without doing much harm to mammal species. Pyrethrin

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