Speaker 1: Guess what will what's that man? Go? Did you know
Speaker 1: if there's a poison garden in northeastern England. It's a
Speaker 1: full garden devoted exclusively to poisonous plants. It sounds so evil,
Speaker 1: but I kind of love it. So what's the purpose
Speaker 1: of this? So when I first read about the garden,
Speaker 1: I imagine it had been there for like hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: but it's only about twenty years old. A duchess inherited
Speaker 1: the gardens and she wanted to do something super fun
Speaker 1: with them, and she thought what could get kids more
Speaker 1: interested than a garden where you're expressly forbidden from stopping
Speaker 1: and smelling the flowers. So is it actually dangerous? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It really is. So when I saw a picture of
Speaker 1: some of the gardeners tending it, they were basically head
Speaker 1: to toe and hazmat suits. They wear gloves to protect
Speaker 1: their hands from boiling up, and they covered their bodies.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, But hearing about the castle, which by the way,
Speaker 1: actually served as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies, and
Speaker 1: this whole poison garden, it made me realize I know
Speaker 1: nothing about the secret world of dangerous and deceptive plants,
Speaker 1: and so that's what today's show is all about. Why
Speaker 1: don't we dive in? Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm
Speaker 1: joined by my good friend man Guestot Ticketers, and today
Speaker 1: we're talking about some of the weirdest, funniest, most dangerous
Speaker 1: plants out there. Kind of a field guide to plants
Speaker 1: your mother wouldn't approve of. Now I go, are you
Speaker 1: actually into plants? I mean not really? So I know
Speaker 1: your wife knows a ton about nature and plants, and
Speaker 1: she has an environmental science degree. And my grandfather was
Speaker 1: a botanist and Forrester, so my mom knows a ton
Speaker 1: about plants. But I know virtually nothing. It's like I've
Speaker 1: tuned out everything they've been talking about all my life.
Speaker 1: But you were the one that wanted to do this
Speaker 1: episode so bad? What what? What was it that got
Speaker 1: too intrigued? That's right. So our pal Austin helped me
Speaker 1: research a bunch of plants for the episode. But I
Speaker 1: think there are two things that really got me interested.
Speaker 1: So the first was I read a little about Liz
Speaker 1: Christie story. Do you know Liz Christie? Yeah, So in
Speaker 1: the early seventies. Christie was this landscape painter in New
Speaker 1: York City who saw these rundown neighborhoods supposedly as canvases
Speaker 1: that she could play with. So she'd go into these
Speaker 1: really rough areas with seed bombs. She'd like take a
Speaker 1: water balloon and fill it with a mixture of seeds
Speaker 1: and water and compost, and then she'd throw it into
Speaker 1: these barren places in like the Bowery or whatever. And
Speaker 1: it was kind of the first guerrilla gardening. I love
Speaker 1: these sea grenades. I mean today they actually make them
Speaker 1: with wildflowers. You can toss them into fields and watch
Speaker 1: them attract honey bees or whatever. Yeah, it's funny. So
Speaker 1: my dad's friend actually had a patent on sad that
Speaker 1: you could roll out with wildflowers for the same purpose,
Speaker 1: but it never caught on, unfortunately. But Liz Christie was amazing.
Speaker 1: She did other things too, Like she'd sneak into these
Speaker 1: rough areas with composts and tomato and cucumber plants and
Speaker 1: wood and whatever, and she just build vegetable gardens where
Speaker 1: she couldn't end. Slowly, the community started pitching in and
Speaker 1: harvesting the vegetables. But when the authorities got wind of it,
Speaker 1: they tried to stop it, but you know, Christie was
Speaker 1: super savvy and she took her story to the press,
Speaker 1: and eventually the city got on board. Like they started
Speaker 1: leasing all these abandoned plots to community gardeners for a
Speaker 1: dollar garden and offering seeds and tools for cheap and
Speaker 1: the movement really took off. Like in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: there were supposedly eight hundred community gardens in the city.
Speaker 1: Eight hundred. I mean, that is an awesome story. So alright, so,
Speaker 1: so what does this have to do with dangerous plants?
Speaker 1: I know? So I'm off to tangents immediately. And it
Speaker 1: didn't take long ago. But I read a little about
Speaker 1: Christie and her seed bombs and started thinking does nature
Speaker 1: do this at all? And then I stumbled into a
Speaker 1: book called Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart, which is so
Speaker 1: good and I'm gonna be referencing it throughout the show.
Speaker 1: But there's a chapter in it called Duck and Cover.
Speaker 1: Duck and cover, Yeah, And the chapter is filled with
Speaker 1: dangerous explosive plants like get this. So here's what Stewart
Speaker 1: writes about the gorse bush quote on a hot day
Speaker 1: sitting near a gors can be hazardous. The pods explode
Speaker 1: without warning, ejecting seeds into the air with a noise
Speaker 1: that sounds like a gunshot. This is basically a plant
Speaker 1: that lures you in with flowers that smell like scented
Speaker 1: coconuts or custard, but then it takes pot shots that
Speaker 1: you when the weather is right. And there are others
Speaker 1: like this too, like like the seeds of a dynamite
Speaker 1: tree can shoot up to like three feet away, or
Speaker 1: or there's a dwarf mistletoe, which is actually related to
Speaker 1: the plant from Christmas time, the one everybody kisses under. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it can actually shoot seeds out at sixty miles
Speaker 1: per hour. These plants are no joke. But the most
Speaker 1: disgusting exploding plant I heard about the squirting cucumbers. Just
Speaker 1: by its name, that sounds so gross. Is it shootout cucumbers?
Speaker 1: It rapid fire or what what happens here? Yeah? What's
Speaker 1: insane is that most of these plants are pretty closely
Speaker 1: related to some normal plants. So the squirting cucumber is
Speaker 1: actually related to cucumbers and gourds and squashes. It's like
Speaker 1: in that general family. But it's so much grosser. And
Speaker 1: at first I thought the squirting was about the wetness
Speaker 1: shooting out, and it is. As Stewart writes, the plants
Speaker 1: two inch long fruits are famous for bursting when right,
Speaker 1: squirting a slimy mucus like use and seeds almost twenty
Speaker 1: feet away. You've said, squirting too much, just starting to
Speaker 1: gross me. And it sounds like a vegetable from like
Speaker 1: Nickelodeon or something. I mean, the fact that it's slimy
Speaker 1: makes it so much more gross, I know, But but
Speaker 1: it's dangerous too. Apparently that veggie mucus will sting your
Speaker 1: skin if it touches it, and it'll make you vomit
Speaker 1: if you ingest it. But the worst thing about the
Speaker 1: squirting cucumber if you accidentally ingested in a drink, like
Speaker 1: if that mucus shoots twenty ft into your beer glass
Speaker 1: or whatever, the squirting cucumber will give you the squirts.
Speaker 1: I think we've talked enough about this one. I think
Speaker 1: it's definitely worth avoiding. But honestly, I can see why
Speaker 1: you're fascinated by this stuff. And when you told me
Speaker 1: about this episode and the field guide idea, I was
Speaker 1: thinking it'd be really fun to organize some of these
Speaker 1: plants and the categories of kids you might want to
Speaker 1: avoid on the playground. You know, there's those explosive types
Speaker 1: definitely sound like the emotionally volatile kids you'd want to
Speaker 1: tiptoe around. But why don't we start I don't know,
Speaker 1: why don't we start with the pig pens. I mean,
Speaker 1: I want some of that stinky stuff you can't help
Speaker 1: but avoid. Yeah, the pig pens. I love it. So
Speaker 1: let me just look through my notes because I know
Speaker 1: what I wanted to talk about here. So I started
Speaker 1: listing off a few favorites just because the smells are
Speaker 1: so amazing, just in case you're like looking for a
Speaker 1: new cologne or whatever. So the Stinky Gord smells like armpits.
Speaker 1: That even has stinky in its name. Yeah, it's actually
Speaker 1: called the Missouri Gord or the fetid Cord, but it
Speaker 1: smells pretty bad. Then you've got the calorie pair, which
Speaker 1: is this tree that smells like rotten fish and the
Speaker 1: box would and when it gets too much sunshine, it
Speaker 1: actually smells like cat pe Wow, which is kind of funny, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, I feel like so many of the facts
Speaker 1: that you and I remember are about things that smell good,
Speaker 1: you know, like the bent a wrong. Is this half bear,
Speaker 1: half cat looking thing that actually smells like buttered popcorn? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that, But this shrub actually feels like it
Speaker 1: belongs in a litter box. But to me, the greatest
Speaker 1: pig pen of them all, the plant that most needs
Speaker 1: a bath has to be the corpse flower. All right,
Speaker 1: So I take that bent a wrong fact back, because
Speaker 1: I know we have discussed the corpse flower in the
Speaker 1: past that it's it's kind of like the rock star
Speaker 1: plant for smelling so bad. I know, people travel, we'll
Speaker 1: see it bloom, not just because of how bad it smells,
Speaker 1: but also because it doesn't bloom that often. I think.
Speaker 1: I remember, it's huge, right, is it like seven ft
Speaker 1: tall or something. Yeah, it's kind of magnificently large and
Speaker 1: also really putrid. And apparently when it blooms, the spadix,
Speaker 1: which is this giant fleshy stem, heats up to about
Speaker 1: ninety degrees to help cook up and spread that aroma.
Speaker 1: And actually I wrote down some of the things the
Speaker 1: corse flower supposedly smells like according to observers, So the
Speaker 1: most common description is quote smells like death, which which
Speaker 1: feels a little on the nose for something called the
Speaker 1: corse flower. But if you've got a more discerning palette,
Speaker 1: it might smell like well, rotting flesh, hot garbage, diapers,
Speaker 1: rotten fish, cheese, smelly socks, and also cabbage cabbage, which
Speaker 1: actually might be the worst smelling of all of those things.
Speaker 1: And I love that humans are so curious about how
Speaker 1: bad something smells. I mean, they immediately want to smell
Speaker 1: it too. It kind of reminds me. You remember that
Speaker 1: old Tom Hank sketch from S and All. He drinks
Speaker 1: that sip of old milk and he's like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is so terrible, we have to try it. The next
Speaker 1: person comes over and tries it, says the same thing,
Speaker 1: and they just keep smelling and eating these terrible things
Speaker 1: because they just have to try it for themselves. But
Speaker 1: we kind of do this naturally as humans for some reason. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And to be clear, I have no interest in traveling
Speaker 1: out of my way to smell a corpse flower. But
Speaker 1: it also feels to me like the Harry Potter jelly beans,
Speaker 1: you know, where they It could be delightful or disgusting,
Speaker 1: and either way, people are happy to have tried to.
Speaker 1: You know, my kids love those things. Oh mine too.
Speaker 1: Some of them are so gross. There were a couple
Speaker 1: I honestly could not eat. Speaking of Harry Potter, Actually
Speaker 1: do want to talk about the man breaks and some
Speaker 1: of the other stuff from the books that exist in
Speaker 1: real life. But before we do that, can we do
Speaker 1: a quick section on I don't know, let's call the
Speaker 1: Eddie Haskell plants. Why Eddie Haskell? Well, these are the
Speaker 1: plants that seem totally harmless and kind of like goody
Speaker 1: two shoes, but can actually be bad influences. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: there are a lot of plants. I didn't realize we're dangerous.
Speaker 1: Like there's the Laurel hedges, which always seems so running
Speaker 1: the mill to me. They're actually in that point is
Speaker 1: in garden we talked about at the top. Apparently when
Speaker 1: people trimmed the hedges and take the clippings to the dump,
Speaker 1: they've fallen asleep behind the wheel from the fumes. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: All right, do you have anything that's maybe a little
Speaker 1: more common than that though, Yeah, I've got a couple.
Speaker 1: So rhubarb believes are apparently toxic. There's this terrific story
Speaker 1: from a Great Britain in nineteen seventeen when a cook
Speaker 1: used a recipe she found in the newspaper. It was
Speaker 1: in this wartime tips column, and the combination of adding
Speaker 1: baking soda to the rhubarb actually killed the minister she
Speaker 1: was cooking for. It was super tragic. But apparently the
Speaker 1: leaves can cause weakness and difficulty breathing on their own
Speaker 1: and uh. And then there are things like cashews, you know,
Speaker 1: but which I know you and I have talked about before.
Speaker 1: But cashews, while they're totally delicious, the plant actually comes
Speaker 1: from the same family as poison oak and ivy and
Speaker 1: you actually have to steam them open to get to
Speaker 1: the tasty truths. So even though you're getting them supposedly row,
Speaker 1: they're actually coming to you a little cooked. But you know,
Speaker 1: Amy Stewart tells this horrible story of a little league
Speaker 1: game in Pennsylvania where they sold some cashews that had
Speaker 1: pieces of a shell in them, and this law huge
Speaker 1: percentage of the little league parents ended up with rashes
Speaker 1: on their arms and armpits and buttocks for the fruit.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know why buttocks these people
Speaker 1: put in their cashews. But my favorite deceptively nice plant
Speaker 1: that's actually not worth hanging out with. Celery. What's what's
Speaker 1: so bad about celery? Well, nothing in small doses. But
Speaker 1: if you eat a pound of it and then go
Speaker 1: to a tanning salt, the celery will actually make you
Speaker 1: extremely sensitive to UV light and it can pigment your
Speaker 1: skin color and give you blisters. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: going tanning, go light on the cellery. It's really good advice.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we're here for our listeners, but that does
Speaker 1: sound awful. All right, So we've done a few unhinged
Speaker 1: plants that will pop off at you, some stinky plants
Speaker 1: you'll probably know to avoid, and then those sneaky, silent
Speaker 1: ones that are hiding a dark side. So how about
Speaker 1: we save some of the liars, cheats and Harry Potter
Speaker 1: plants for after a break. So at the top of
Speaker 1: the show, we were talking about this incredib about Poisoned Garden,
Speaker 1: and we're lucky today because we actually have the head
Speaker 1: gardener at the Poisoned Garden. But Trevor Jones welcomed to
Speaker 1: part time genius. Hello. All right, so one of our
Speaker 1: favorite things is just the sign to the entrance that says,
Speaker 1: these plants can kill and it's so ominous. What's the
Speaker 1: philocity behind the garden and how do you choose what
Speaker 1: plants go in there? The Duchess of Northumberland, who created
Speaker 1: the hold of the garden, was fascinated with poisonous plants.
Speaker 1: She felt that children these days tend to sit in
Speaker 1: front of computer screens and look at them of our phones,
Speaker 1: but never get out into the big wide world and
Speaker 1: experience the environment that they're growing up in. So she
Speaker 1: was aware that many children these days don't know the
Speaker 1: harmful effects of plants, especially native plants that grow here
Speaker 1: in the UK, but also some exotic ones, and so
Speaker 1: part of the reasoning for the Poison Garden was to
Speaker 1: capture the imagination of a child and teach them about
Speaker 1: the harmful effects of plants and how they would all
Speaker 1: kill you. So we have storytellers that build up a
Speaker 1: huge drama before anybody actually enters, and you're warned not
Speaker 1: to touch the plants, stand too close to them, smell them,
Speaker 1: will definitely not taste them, because they all have the
Speaker 1: ability to kill you. Well, speaking of children, I'm guessing
Speaker 1: these plants are kind of like children, and that you
Speaker 1: can't pick a favorite, but we're still going to ask
Speaker 1: you anyway, do you have a favorite plant? There? I
Speaker 1: like to tell the story of acrono item. It's a
Speaker 1: cottage garden plant. It's her basis. It dives down the winter,
Speaker 1: shoots up again in the spring, and it has fantastic,
Speaker 1: deep blue flowers. It's often called monkshood because the flower
Speaker 1: looks like an old fashioned monkshood. Now, the whole of
Speaker 1: that plant is poisonous, but we relate it to an
Speaker 1: up to date murder story because in two thousands and ten,
Speaker 1: a woman called lack Finder Singh who had fallen out
Speaker 1: with her lover. He had kicked her out of the
Speaker 1: home that they shared, so to get revenge on him,
Speaker 1: she found some aconite the police seed, and she crushed
Speaker 1: it up and then went back into the house and
Speaker 1: third into his curry which was in the fridge. He
Speaker 1: then returned home from work with his new girlfriend and
Speaker 1: ad to curry, and he died within thirty six hours.
Speaker 1: And when toxicology reports came back, they said that it
Speaker 1: was all down to aconite and poisoning, and they chased
Speaker 1: it back to luck Finder and she's now in prison.
Speaker 1: So when did it occur to you that being a
Speaker 1: poison gardener could be a real job. Well, I came
Speaker 1: to Annick ten years ago and I've never heard about
Speaker 1: a collection of poisonous plants, although I've been in gardening
Speaker 1: all my days until I got to Annek and then
Speaker 1: the fascination that is all about the Poison Garden started
Speaker 1: to infect me as well, and so I was very
Speaker 1: keen on poisonous plants. And I'm curious, how did the
Speaker 1: Harry Potter movies filming there change admissions to the garden.
Speaker 1: We've had a spinoff from how He Potter film because
Speaker 1: in how He pos talked about Man Drake, and so
Speaker 1: we grow Man Drake in the Poison Garden because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of superstition around Man Drake. At one time
Speaker 1: that was more prized than gold for its magical properties,
Speaker 1: and even today people will buy mandrake roots and chop
Speaker 1: them up. It's supposed to be a very good affle
Speaker 1: dizzy act, but I can't guarantee you now. But there's
Speaker 1: a lot of superstition about the plant. And the plant
Speaker 1: has a very strong, thick cap roots very much like
Speaker 1: a carrot, but it forks, so it's often have two
Speaker 1: stems to it, so when it gets dug up, it
Speaker 1: can often look like a little man with two legs
Speaker 1: and two arms, and they say that it's the devil himself.
Speaker 1: And if you dig a mandrake up, you can actually
Speaker 1: hear it's screaming as it comes up out of the ground.
Speaker 1: And then when you see it, it does look like
Speaker 1: a little like a little man. And so if you
Speaker 1: do that, you're cursed. So the stories goes. If you
Speaker 1: want to get rid of your man drake used to
Speaker 1: have to tie a rope around the manre it itself
Speaker 1: and then around donkey or a dog. Kick the donkey
Speaker 1: or the dog and they would run off and they
Speaker 1: would pull an and rake up and as it screamed,
Speaker 1: so they heard the screaming, they were the culprit because
Speaker 1: they pulled it up. The donkey or the dog was
Speaker 1: cursed and you survived to tell the tale. What's the
Speaker 1: best thing you overhear the gardens? Like, what's the most
Speaker 1: satisfying part of the job in the poison garden. It's
Speaker 1: relating the stories that we tell to everyday occurrences we
Speaker 1: grow in the poison garden. We grow just common laurel
Speaker 1: and a lot of our visitors will grow low as
Speaker 1: a hedge. It's very very common evergreen plant, but it
Speaker 1: has the ability to kill you, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: because the laurel leaves um produce cyanide. So when you
Speaker 1: cut your laurel hedge, if you accept up the clippings
Speaker 1: and put them into your car to take them to
Speaker 1: the dump, as you sit in your car, so the
Speaker 1: cyanide will start to build up in the car. That
Speaker 1: then affects your nervous system and it's starts the brain
Speaker 1: of oxygen. And so many people don't be like that,
Speaker 1: and lots of our visitors have told us that they
Speaker 1: have start exactly that they's driven to the dump with
Speaker 1: these cuttings in the back of their car and they've
Speaker 1: got very light headed and one gentleman he is admitted
Speaker 1: to crashing into a lamp post. It was all down
Speaker 1: to cyanide poisoning. What's Trevor, I can't wait to get
Speaker 1: over to the gardens. This has been fascinating and thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us on Part Time Genius. Well pleasure,
Speaker 1: welcome back to Part Time Genius. Today we've been thumbing
Speaker 1: our way through a field guide of plants. Your mother
Speaker 1: wouldn't approve of I knew all this talk of plants
Speaker 1: and poisons has reminded me of that Debora Bloom story
Speaker 1: and the roots of c s I. You know, that's
Speaker 1: actually one of my favorite stories. But would you mind
Speaker 1: telling it to our listeners. So Debora Blooms, this wonderful
Speaker 1: journalist who wrote The Poisoner's Handbook. But in it she
Speaker 1: tells this great story from Belgium. It's about poisoning by
Speaker 1: nicotine in the eighteen fifties. So basically at the time
Speaker 1: no one knew how to detect plant alkaloids from dead bodies.
Speaker 1: And the way she tells that, there's a French prosecutor
Speaker 1: and a famous death by morphine case, and he confirms
Speaker 1: this in the trial and in the courtroom he said,
Speaker 1: let us tell would be poisoners, use plant poisons, fear nothing.
Speaker 1: Your crime will go unpunished. There's no physical evidence, it
Speaker 1: cannot be found. I mean he was talking from a
Speaker 1: point of frustration. But at least one person took his advice.
Speaker 1: It was the Count of Boucarmi. So this is one
Speaker 1: of those classic cases of people killing their relative for inheritance,
Speaker 1: and the Count and Countess lived extravagantly. They were basically
Speaker 1: like the FitzGeralds of their time, throwing outrageous parties and
Speaker 1: living beyond their means. So they needed more cash, and
Speaker 1: they knew that when the count as sickly brother passed away,
Speaker 1: they'd inherit his loot, But it turns out he wasn't
Speaker 1: dying fast enough, so they decided to speed up the process.
Speaker 1: So the count started experience ending with nicotine poisoning. He
Speaker 1: had this converted laundry shaw that he turned into a
Speaker 1: lab and claimed he was using it to mix up perfumes.
Speaker 1: But when his servants peek in, he's extracting things from
Speaker 1: plants and has vials and burners set up in there,
Speaker 1: and suddenly tiny dead animals starts showing up left outside
Speaker 1: the lab. I mean, they saw dead birds, rabbits and
Speaker 1: several other animals, which was of course suspicious to them,
Speaker 1: and so they take note of this. And then the
Speaker 1: couple had their in law over for dinner, and there's
Speaker 1: more suspicious stuff that happens. Then they send the kids
Speaker 1: away for dinner to eat elsewhere, which is pretty unusual
Speaker 1: for them. The Countess insists on ladling out the food
Speaker 1: herself and distributing the plates herself and the servants are
Speaker 1: pointedly sent away, and then during the course of the meal,
Speaker 1: her brother passes out with a thud. The count and
Speaker 1: countess claim it's a stroke, but something fishy has clearly happened,
Speaker 1: and they rinse his throat with vinegar and burned the
Speaker 1: dead man's clothes and basically get rid of all the evidence,
Speaker 1: which sounds so shady, right, I know, But here's the
Speaker 1: genius of it and why plant poisoning used to work
Speaker 1: so well. The nicotine is made up of super simple
Speaker 1: organic materials. It's just carbon and nitrogen and hydrogen and
Speaker 1: you know, all the stuff that's in the air and
Speaker 1: in our bodies. But it's also a super effective poison
Speaker 1: that works astonishingly well and at high speeds when it's
Speaker 1: in high doses. And so the servants report the case,
Speaker 1: and the police knew who did it, but have zero proof.
Speaker 1: Then Belgian's most famous chemist, Jeane sarves Stas, who spends
Speaker 1: three months figuring out how to pull alkaloids from preserved tissues,
Speaker 1: and he finally uses the proof to convince a judge
Speaker 1: of their guilt, and the justice is swift, but The
Speaker 1: crazy part is that while Stas's process has been updated,
Speaker 1: according to Bloom, it's still used in toxicology labs today. Crazy.
Speaker 1: It really is kind of the rut of CSID. But
Speaker 1: what's the moral of all this? I guess the moral
Speaker 1: would be, you know, don't use plants to murder your
Speaker 1: friends and family. And maybe more than that, don't murder.
Speaker 1: That would be that the moral don't murder does like
Speaker 1: smart words to live by, and uh, you know what's funny.
Speaker 1: Amy Stewart makes this point in the book that poisons
Speaker 1: are all around us, like a lot of common house
Speaker 1: plants are poisonous. The peace lily, the philodendron. I mean,
Speaker 1: we had both of those in our home growing up.
Speaker 1: And the truth is you probably wouldn't eat much of
Speaker 1: either because they'd make your mouth burned before you'd scarf
Speaker 1: down too much. Well, what's interesting is that most house
Speaker 1: plants were never chosen for their safety. They were chosen
Speaker 1: because they thrive year round in a fifty to seventy
Speaker 1: degree climate, you know, the same temperature as our homes,
Speaker 1: which is why many of them are actually tropical plants
Speaker 1: from South American and African jungles. I mean that's something
Speaker 1: I never considered. Yeah, me either. But I think we've
Speaker 1: gotten a little off topic here, so let's let's get
Speaker 1: back to some of those plants your mom doesn't want
Speaker 1: you playing with. I have to be I love that
Speaker 1: squirting cucumber plant. You got any more like that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So there are two other plants I flagged. The first
Speaker 1: one is called the African milk tree, and it's disgusting
Speaker 1: because if you don't prune it carefully, it can squirt.
Speaker 1: The African milk sapp at get big with the squirts.
Speaker 1: I guess you took that requests the most terrifying. And
Speaker 1: there's this one scientist who's pruning his tree and he
Speaker 1: got it right in the eye and he used to
Speaker 1: have like vision in the eye, and then he went
Speaker 1: legally blind and that sounds terrible. But after a rigorous
Speaker 1: course of sailing that he gave himself for ten days,
Speaker 1: his eye went back to being, which I thought was crazy.
Speaker 1: That it causes this temporary blindness that you can come
Speaker 1: back from. Wow, that's wild, all right. And and the
Speaker 1: other one, Yeah, so this one's totally amazing and also
Speaker 1: temporarily takes away from one of your abilities. But it's
Speaker 1: called the dumb cane. As Amy Stewart puts a quote,
Speaker 1: this tropical South American plant is well known for its
Speaker 1: ability to temporarily inflame vocal cords, leaving people completely unable
Speaker 1: to speak. And that does sound like something out of
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, and we did promise to talk about her, definitely,
Speaker 1: So it's like straight out of the Charms and Potions
Speaker 1: books or any of Professor Sprouts lessons. But before we
Speaker 1: get into that, the plant diffian Bakia has one more
Speaker 1: unusual side effect. In the Caribbean, men used to chew
Speaker 1: it as a male contraceptive, really because they ust their
Speaker 1: ability to smooth talk women or something. No, it actually
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with them losing their voice. There's
Speaker 1: some sort of historical preparation that we don't know about
Speaker 1: that people used to use to make sure they didn't
Speaker 1: have kids, and it was kind of like an early
Speaker 1: version of the male pill. It supposedly lasted forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: But what's weirder is that the Nazis actually started playing
Speaker 1: with the plant in the hopes that they could make
Speaker 1: certain populations sterile, and luckily they could never get enough
Speaker 1: of the plant to really experiment on. That's really creepy,
Speaker 1: but I do love the idea of plants with superpowers.
Speaker 1: All right, what other Harry Potter type plants. Well, there's
Speaker 1: also the Man Drake, which Trevor talked about earlier on
Speaker 1: at Hogwarts. Mandrakes are one of those plants that are
Speaker 1: always wailing and whining. Would they get pulled out of
Speaker 1: the soil and they shriek at these high pitched volumes.
Speaker 1: But I had no idea. That was like a myth
Speaker 1: from medieval times, And in fact, Austin told me that
Speaker 1: the preferred method for uprooting Man Drake was to use
Speaker 1: a rope and tie it to a dog and then
Speaker 1: just leave, and when the dog finally pulled away, the
Speaker 1: man Drake would get uprooted. But there was this idea
Speaker 1: that even the dog might die from doing the uprooting,
Speaker 1: which I just think that's the worst possible way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's not do it that way. So um any Stewart
Speaker 1: actually has another story about the plant, and that's that
Speaker 1: Hannibal used to leave Mandrake confused wines for his enemies,
Speaker 1: which would intoxicate them and give them hallucinations, and then
Speaker 1: you'd come back to easily defeat them when they were
Speaker 1: drunk and drugged. Of course, the fact that he used
Speaker 1: to ride and on giant elephants probably only made those
Speaker 1: hallucinations were so I'm guessing. Yeah. So there's some other
Speaker 1: plants that get shout outs in Harry Potter, like monks Hood,
Speaker 1: which is actually a toxic plant that gardeners need gloves
Speaker 1: to handle. But I kind of love the plants that
Speaker 1: cure things. And one I found completely fascinating is the
Speaker 1: ordeal beans. Oh I know about these? Aren't these the
Speaker 1: truth telling beans? Like I think I read that if
Speaker 1: you swallow the beans and vomited, you were considered innocent,
Speaker 1: but if you ate the beans and died, then you
Speaker 1: were guilty. Yes, this perverse logic, and it was kind
Speaker 1: of like at the Salem witch trials, where if you're
Speaker 1: thrown in a river and drown, you were innocent, but
Speaker 1: if you floated you were definitely a witch. But doesn't.
Speaker 1: What's fascinating about these beans to me. What's crazy is
Speaker 1: that the beans are actually an antidote or a cure
Speaker 1: for mandrake poisoning, Like if you've been poisoned by man
Speaker 1: drake in an emergency room, they can actually use these
Speaker 1: beans to restore heartbeats and snap people back into consciousness.
Speaker 1: That is incredible. All right. So, so we've covered the
Speaker 1: Eddie Haskell's the stink weeds, and now we've covered some
Speaker 1: of the plants your mom might worry or two into
Speaker 1: fantasy or something. I guess those are the uh let's
Speaker 1: call those the comic concept. But I think it's time
Speaker 1: to get to talk about one we've been waiting for.
Speaker 1: And these are the bad boys of plant life, the
Speaker 1: liars and the cheats and the overseex plants that are
Speaker 1: a little too salacious for their own good until I'm
Speaker 1: ready for this, right all right, So before we get
Speaker 1: to those, how but we take a little break, all right, man.
Speaker 1: This is a special treat today because usually our quiz
Speaker 1: takers join us by phone, but today our guests are
Speaker 1: here in studio with us. We have the hosts of
Speaker 1: one of my favorite shows called Food Stuff here at
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to
Speaker 1: part time Genius. Thanks for having yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: All right, So, again, like I mentioned, this is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite shows and it's so fun because it's
Speaker 1: not just history and science it's like all of this
Speaker 1: combined in a way that I haven't heard many food
Speaker 1: shows doing. And I was curious to hear from you guys.
Speaker 1: You know what gave you the idea to start the show? Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, all hush and and second of all, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. We love food. Yeah, we're kind of
Speaker 1: super nerds about it. Yeah. Annie in particular, I think
Speaker 1: the day that I realized that I wanted her on
Speaker 1: the show, Um, I came to her, it was like, please,
Speaker 1: we had the show. I need a co host. And
Speaker 1: it's so terrific. Was we were out in in Austin
Speaker 1: at south By Southwest and she had planned months in advance,
Speaker 1: like and like put in orders for barbecue places and
Speaker 1: like had this entire map of everywhere that we needed
Speaker 1: to go to eat in the sea and I was
Speaker 1: like this one, Like this is I call it maximizing.
Speaker 1: I like to maximize my experience when I visited city,
Speaker 1: and uh, we had such a good time. We tried
Speaker 1: so much good food. Yeah. We get so excited about
Speaker 1: all the research because every episode has a fact that
Speaker 1: I just would never have never have guests. Yea, it's
Speaker 1: so interesting through food science. I feel a little bit
Speaker 1: less like a you know, mad scientist in training. Right,
Speaker 1: how do you guys come up with the topics? Obviously
Speaker 1: there are a lot of foods out there, but how
Speaker 1: do you decide which ones to focus on? We do
Speaker 1: get a lot of requests in from listeners and those
Speaker 1: are tremendously helpful, like stuff that we wouldn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: thought to do. But also it's just like we'll run
Speaker 1: across stuff. You know, what was it this week? Aspects? Aspects? Oh,
Speaker 1: I went on such a rabbit hole about as it's
Speaker 1: a meat gelatine. Um, these were really big in like
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties or so. It's a jelly mold that's savory,
Speaker 1: made of usually like bone broth a k A stock
Speaker 1: as they call it in the industry, and that that'll
Speaker 1: set up into a good solid mold and it's usually
Speaker 1: got like bits of meat and egg and vegetable and
Speaker 1: off in it. It's they look they look like they're
Speaker 1: from a hell dimension. Yeah, I mean, I mean they're
Speaker 1: supposedly delicious. They made me laugh alout just looking at
Speaker 1: the picture. Highly recommends to go down a similar rabbit hole. Well,
Speaker 1: for our listeners, there have been great episodes on Bloody
Speaker 1: Mary's Fried Chicken, Honey, the Weird History of the Graham Cracker,
Speaker 1: which is I expected it to be a great episode
Speaker 1: and it was so so it's always a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason we wanted to have you on
Speaker 1: today though, as you did uh an episode recently about
Speaker 1: the tomato and you know we're doing this episode on
Speaker 1: dangerous and poisonous plans. You guys have talked about how
Speaker 1: Europeans for for a long time thought that tomatoes were poisonous.
Speaker 1: I thought it gets you guys to explain why that
Speaker 1: was certainly wealthy Europeans. I think that the poorer folks
Speaker 1: were just like, it's a food, you should eat it, right, Well,
Speaker 1: wealthier Europeans like to eat off of these fancy pewter plates,
Speaker 1: especially at the time this was around the f fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen hundreds m h. And tomatoes have a lot
Speaker 1: of acid, and so the acid would cause um, lead
Speaker 1: to leak out of the pewter plates and could lead
Speaker 1: to lead poisoning, which can lead to death. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: legitimate reason for being afraid. Also, um, they were kind
Speaker 1: of tomatoes were kind of poorly classified or unfortunately classified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: correctly classified but as a night shade, which is a
Speaker 1: type of poisonous plant in some cases. Yes. Uh. And
Speaker 1: from that, yes, um, they were called um lego persicons.
Speaker 1: That's how they were classified, which translates the Greek word
Speaker 1: is wolf peach. Right. And part of the reason they
Speaker 1: were called that is because they were in the night
Speaker 1: shaded family and related to wolf spane, which people thought
Speaker 1: at the time could summon were wolves. Oh nice, So
Speaker 1: you got to talk about were wolves. That's pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so exciting. Yeah, as a love of the title
Speaker 1: of episode, right, it was you say, Tomato, I say,
Speaker 1: and wolf spaine in nightshade do have hallucinogenic qualities. So
Speaker 1: so it's easy to see where people might think that
Speaker 1: where wolves are involved, if they're hanging out around too
Speaker 1: much wolf spain. Right. But that is really interesting to
Speaker 1: imagine that that those that had much less money wouldn't
Speaker 1: have thought of them as as being poisonous because they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had that introduction of yeah, so the fancy
Speaker 1: pewter plates, and they wouldn't have gotten that taxonomy lesson.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, rich people would keep them on their
Speaker 1: tables as like ornaments, as like goth table decoration, like
Speaker 1: they thought that they were poisonous and they would have
Speaker 1: them as these table centerpieces. Yeah, well, very cool. That
Speaker 1: that made us think we should have you guys on
Speaker 1: the show. We've been wanting to have you here anyway,
Speaker 1: so it was a good excuse to get you here
Speaker 1: to play this very very important quiz. What quiz are
Speaker 1: we going to have these guys play today? Super important?
Speaker 1: It's called real name of a mushroom or a band
Speaker 1: that's playing south By Southwest this year, so they're the
Speaker 1: south By Connection again. So there are tons of names
Speaker 1: of mushrooms that are really quirking strange, like scurfy twiglet
Speaker 1: and fingered candle snuff names of actual mushrooms. Does that
Speaker 1: make you hungry? Yeah, so we thought it'd be fun
Speaker 1: to have you come on and work together. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have you work together because your teammates too. I can
Speaker 1: see how you do in a five question quiz. Okay,
Speaker 1: number one, Potato earth Ball. Is this a real mushroom
Speaker 1: or the name of a band playing at south By
Speaker 1: Southwest this year? Potato earth Since since it's got the
Speaker 1: earth element to it, I would say I would say
Speaker 1: it's an actual mushroom. I agree. Yeah, Wow, these guys
Speaker 1: are good, right. It's a holy puffball mushroom? Is that
Speaker 1: from a description? The sexy shape of potatoes? Sees there?
Speaker 1: One for one? Number two snake tongue truffle club that
Speaker 1: sounds like a bar option. Um, I think I think
Speaker 1: drinking was involved in that one, though, So I'm going
Speaker 1: to go with band. Do you would you agree? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think that's a band. I'm glad we stumped him
Speaker 1: on at least one. Well, it was named in the UK,
Speaker 1: so there might have been some drinking in It actually
Speaker 1: looks like a big snake tongue sticking out of the ground.
Speaker 1: Number three a yucky duster, yucky duster, and he's making
Speaker 1: the most amazing face right now. I'm going to say
Speaker 1: that either if it is a band, it's also poisonous.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with mushroom. Oh wow, we got him again. Dang,
Speaker 1: it's a band. It's a four person band that sounds
Speaker 1: completely different depending on which member wrote the song. Oh
Speaker 1: all right, here we go. You still have as for
Speaker 1: the big Price. Number four pancake Crust. We're trying so
Speaker 1: hard to not just like snort after every name we're hearing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh goodness. I mean that could certainly describe the skin
Speaker 1: on the top of I mean, I feel like I've
Speaker 1: seen that thing before. Well, I'll trust your judgment on
Speaker 1: that one. It's a real funny say infects a stone
Speaker 1: fruit trees. Nicely done. Okay, this is the big one
Speaker 1: for the big prize. Number five, Delicate Steve, Delicate Steve
Speaker 1: mushroom or a banded south By Well, delicate Steve certainly
Speaker 1: sounds like a band that I I've seen four It
Speaker 1: sounds like some band members that I think many different Steves.
Speaker 1: They're all delicate. They're all delicate. Sorry about its Steve's
Speaker 1: So they're going with band? What do you think? You're right?
Speaker 1: It's a band from New Jersey, which shouldn't be confused
Speaker 1: with a slow Steve. A band from Berlin that's also
Speaker 1: playing out going there, oh man. So, so how did
Speaker 1: they do today? Mango? They did so great, we're gonna
Speaker 1: give him a prize. So today they're going home with
Speaker 1: there's an actual prize of Rockabye, Baby Lullabye renditions of
Speaker 1: justin timber Lakes justin timber Lake c D. I had
Speaker 1: on my desk, oh Man, it's the only one. Good
Speaker 1: luck finding a place to play a CD. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have to fight over this. Yeah, definitely, that's all right. Well,
Speaker 1: I hope all our listeners will check out food Stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a terrific show. Lauren and Annie, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. Oh, thank you guys so much. Thank
Speaker 1: you for having us so mago. We were just about
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the liars and the sexpots
Speaker 1: and you know, the plants your mother definitely doesn't want
Speaker 1: you hanging out with. So who's your favorite liar in
Speaker 1: the mix? Yeah, there's definitely some crafty greenery out there,
Speaker 1: just spinning lies and trying to get their seed into
Speaker 1: the wild. But I think my favorite ones are the
Speaker 1: ones that trick insects. So there's an orchid that's apparently
Speaker 1: so sexy that wasts tried to mate with it, and
Speaker 1: it isn't just romance. It's like aggressive wasp sex, and
Speaker 1: the dumb male wasps gets so excited they get covered
Speaker 1: in pollen and then move on to another orchid, spreading
Speaker 1: the pollen along the way. But the best and weirdest
Speaker 1: part is that the orchids are so good at their
Speaker 1: deception that male wasps actually prefer the flowers to females,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they'll leave a female wasp mid population because
Speaker 1: the flower seems that much more appealing. So I don't
Speaker 1: think you said, what what it's called. What's it called? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called the tongue orchid, which is which is gross.
Speaker 1: And wow, that's a good one, all right, So what
Speaker 1: else you got, Well, this one's hilarious. While impersonating an
Speaker 1: insect is one thing, impersonating a piece of dung is
Speaker 1: a totally different level. But that's what the restiness say.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm pronouncing that right, But it's from
Speaker 1: South Africa and it does this when it drops seeds
Speaker 1: that look suspiciously like antelope dung on the ground. Wow,
Speaker 1: So they just are they marking their territory. It's so
Speaker 1: much more than that. So basically, the seeds attract dung beetles,
Speaker 1: which just saunter up the seed and roll it around.
Speaker 1: And when they decided to burrow into it, instead of
Speaker 1: getting a delicious treat, they discovered that they've been tricked
Speaker 1: into planning a seed in the ground. All right, that's
Speaker 1: pretty genius. But that's a common survival strategy, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's common enough that has a name. It's
Speaker 1: called fecal mimoric carrey. Alright, so we probably need to
Speaker 1: wrap this up it. How about you send us off
Speaker 1: with one last plant that baffled you. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think I have just the one. So here's one that
Speaker 1: mother definitely wouldn't approve of, which scientists are just completely
Speaker 1: delighted by. It's an orchid called the halka glossom amasanium,
Speaker 1: which is this bisexual flower. Well this sounds juicy, okay,
Speaker 1: go on, Yeah, so basically the plant works against gravity
Speaker 1: to pollinate itself. But let me just quote new scientists
Speaker 1: because they do a way better job of explaining it.
Speaker 1: Although many plants self fertilize, a rare orchid that grows
Speaker 1: on tree trunks in China takes the process to hitherto
Speaker 1: unknown heights through a gymnastic feat never seen before in plants.
Speaker 1: It bends its pollen containing male another round through a
Speaker 1: full circle before jabbing it into the female stigma to
Speaker 1: complete fertilization at sixty days. The act takes even longer
Speaker 1: than tantric sex. This basically flower point. I kind of
Speaker 1: feel dirty listening to that. I mean, what's crazy is
Speaker 1: that the plant can basically self pollinate without any of
Speaker 1: the standard means insects when gravity, rain, none of that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of insane that it does it all on
Speaker 1: its own. But you know one thing we could never
Speaker 1: do on our own, I do the part time genius
Speaker 1: fact off. Yeah, let's go for it. M R. Did
Speaker 1: you know that you don't need those little flower chemical
Speaker 1: packets to make your flowers perk up? A little viagora
Speaker 1: will make the flower stems straighten up fast. According to
Speaker 1: Business Insider, auguste, teen seventy seven set the record for
Speaker 1: the most flowers sold in the US on a single day.
Speaker 1: What happened? It was the day after Elvis passed away.
Speaker 1: Oh that's crazy, all right? What did you know that
Speaker 1: venus fly traps amid a fluorescent blue light to attract bugs. Also,
Speaker 1: they're the official state carnivorous plan of North Carolina? I mean,
Speaker 1: what else is North Carolina going to give it to?
Speaker 1: Speaking of carnivorous plants, did you know figs aren't considered vegetarian.
Speaker 1: Figs are pollinated by wasps and then the flower captures
Speaker 1: and traps them. So there's wasps that's been coughton digested
Speaker 1: in most figs eat, which is funny to think that
Speaker 1: figs aren't vegetarian while oysters might be. I mean, according
Speaker 1: to some vegans and vegetarians at least, it's because they
Speaker 1: don't experience pain. But that's not my fact. That's not
Speaker 1: the fact. Did you know that plants can hear water?
Speaker 1: I thought I thought that was just like an old
Speaker 1: wives tale. I used to think that too, but scientific
Speaker 1: American and a professor from Australia proved me wrong. Was
Speaker 1: Professor Monica Gagliano, and she devised an experiment with pea
Speaker 1: seedlings where plants inch their way towards pipes, and she
Speaker 1: theorized that while the plants later followed moisture grades, they
Speaker 1: were initially drawn to the water sources by sound waves
Speaker 1: from inside the pipes. That's amazing. So I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to let you take home the trophy today. Thanks, and
Speaker 1: I think that's it for today's episode of Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and
Speaker 1: wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
Speaker 1: important things. We couldn't even begin to understand Chris and
Speaker 1: McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
Speaker 1: song and does the MIXI mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland
Speaker 1: does the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
Speaker 1: with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Speaker 1: Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Coo gets the
Speaker 1: show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
Speaker 1: what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
Speaker 1: really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
Speaker 1: a good review for us. Do we do? We forget
Speaker 1: Jason Jason who did the difficult differ