Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart Read Free Book Online

strain, ‘Red Savina’, earned a Guinness World Record in 1994 for the hottest pepper, with a Scoville rating of over 500,000 SHU. But the hottest habanero in the world may come from Dorset, England, an area not known for its spicy cuisine.
    An English market gardener developed ‘Dorset Naga’ from the seeds of a Bangladeshi pepper. The best seedlings were selected and grown, and after a few successive generations they had a pepper so hot that it could hardly be used as a flavoring. You could hold the pepper by the stalk and rub it against your food, but to do more than that would be to tempt fate. Two American laboratories tested the peppers using a new technology, high-pressure liquid chromatography. The heat levels approached 1 million SHU. As a comparison, the pepper spray used by police officers clocks in at 2 million to 5 million SHU.
    Strangely, the active ingredient in hot peppers, capsaicin,does not actually burn. It stimulates nerve endings to send a signal to the brain that mimics a burning sensation. Capsaicin does not dissolve in water, so grabbing for the water jug to put out the fire in your mouth is useless. However, it will bind to a fat like butter, milk, or cheese. A good stiff drink is also in order, as the alcohol works as a solvent.
    But nothing could protect you against the power of Blair’s 16 Million Reserve, a so-called pharmaceutical grade hot sauce made of pure capsaicin extract. A tiny one-milliliter bottle of the clear potion sells for $199 and comes with a warning that it must be used “for experimental/display purposes only” and never as a flavoring for food.
    Meet the Relatives? Peppers are another notorious member of the nightshade family, which includes tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant, along with such evildoers as tobacco, datura, and henbane.

INTOXICATING

Henbane
    HYOSCYAMUS NIGER
    The particular bit of vegetable wickedness known as henbane was, according to legend, a key ingredient in witches’ flying potions. A salve of henbane, belladonna, mandrake, and a few other deadly plants, applied to the skin, would make anyone feel as if they were flying. Mixtures like this have been called the devil’s own recipe for good reason. In Turkey children play a game in which they eat various parts of certain plants. A medical study showed that a quarter of the children who played that game became severely intoxicated after eating henbane. Five went into a coma and two died.
    FAMILY:
Solanaceae
    HABITAT:
Widespread across temperate climates
    NATIVE TO:
Mediterranean Europe, North Africa
    COMMON NAMES:
Hog’s bean, fetid nightshade, stinking Roger. Henbane means literally “killer of hens.”
    Hyoscyamus niger
is a weedy annual or biennial that grows to just one or two feet tall and produces yellow flowers, with what have been described as “lurid purple veins.” The small, oval seeds are a dull yellow color and are every bit as poisonous as the rest of the plant.
    Although henbane contains alkaloids similar to those found in its close relatives, datura and belladonna, it is particularly knownfor its rank odor. Pliny the Elder wrote that the various strains of henbane “trouble the braine, and put men beside their right wits; beside that, they breed dizziness of the head.” In fact, staff at the Alnwick Poison Garden in northern England report that two guests have fainted on hot days in the presence of henbane. Was it the heat or the soporific effects of the plant? No one knows for sure, but they warn guests to give this plant a wide berth.
    In the Middle Ages henbane was added to beer to enhance its intoxicating effects. To keep this and other suspicious ingredients out of beer, Germany’s 1516 Bavarian Purity Law mandated that beer be brewed with nothing more than hops, barley, and water. (Yeast was allowed later after its role was better understood.)
    Henbane was used as a very risky form of anesthesia from Roman times until the introduction of ether and chloroform in the