Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

nineteenth century. A “sopoforific sponge” would be soaked in the juices of henbane, opium poppy, and mandrake. It could be dried, stored, and later wetted with hot water for some unlucky surgical candidate to inhale. With any luck, the patient drifted into a twilight sleep and awoke later with no memory of the procedure. However, the quality of these potions was very uneven. Too little and the patient would feel everything; too much and they might never feel anything again.
    Meet the Relatives Other
Hyoscyamus
species like
H. albus
, called white henbane or Russian henbane, and
H. muticus
, known as Egyptian henbane, are just as poisonous.

INTOXICATING

THE DEVIL’S BARTENDER
    The plant kingdom furnishes an astonishing array of intoxicating ingredients. A well-stocked bar owes its provisions to everyday crops like grapes, potatoes, corn, barley, and rye. But alcoholic beverages used to include far more interesting plant ingredients. Vin Mariani was a potent brew of coca leaves and red wine that was popular in the nineteenth century. Laudanum, a medicine made from alcohol and opium, was not only prescribed by doctors until the early twentieth century but also tipped into brandy for an addictive cocktail. (King George IV favored this drink.) The ancient Greeks wrote about a fermented barley drink called kykeon that would cause psychoactive episodes. Scholars speculate that it wasbrewed from ergot-infected rye, making it a sort of ancient precursor to LSD.

    Consider some of the wicked plants lurking behind the bar today:

ABSINTHE
    The flavor—and bad reputation—come from
Artemisia absinthium
, or wormwood. This low-growing, silvery perennial has a bitter, pungent fragrance. Wormwood is one of the many herbs used to flavor absinthe, that pale green, highly alcoholic drink from the nineteenth century that was believed to cause hallucinations and madness. “The Green Fairy” became an essential part of bohemian café life in Paris. Oscar Wilde, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were all notorious absinthe swillers. The drink was banned throughout Europe and the United States in the early twentieth century as part of the prohibition movement.
    Wormwood is one of the many herbs used to flavor absinthe, that pale green drink from the 19th century that was believed to cause hallucinations and madness.
    What makes absinthe so wicked? Wormwood contains a potent ingredient called thujone that at high concentrations can cause seizures and death. Recently, however, mass spectrometer analysis has demonstrated that the level of thujone in absinthe is minuscule, and that the beverage’s intoxicating effects can only be blamed on the fact that it is a 130-proof spirit, almost twice as alcoholic as gin or vodka.
    Absinthe is now legal in the European Union, as long as the level of thujone is below a specific threshold. In the United States any product containing thujone is strictly banned, but new, thujone-free absinthes are permitted.

MEZCAL AND TEQUILA
    Made from the flowers of the agave plant, whose sharp thorns and highly irritating sap are so forbidding that jailers planted them around Alcatraz to discourage escape attempts. The blue agave,
Agave tequilana
, goes into the popular spirit that bears its name, but Americans are probably more familiar with the century plant,
A. americana
. In spite of their prickly thorns and preference for dry, desert climates, these plants are actually not cacti. They are in the Agavaceae family and are more closely related to hostas, yuccas, and the popular houseplant
Chlorophytum comosum
, or spider plant. The worm in mezcal is the larvae of a moth or weevil that feeds on the plant.

ZUBROWKA
    A traditional Polish vodka flavored with a blade of bison grass
(Hiero-chloe odorata)
, also called sweet grass or holy grass. The grass is native to both Europe and North America, and Native Americans have used it for basketry, incense, and medicine. The plant is a natural source of the