Noxious, Deadly, and Ill-Omened Plants.
Prof. De Gubernatis remarks that “there are good and bad herbs, and good and bad plants: the good are the work of Ormuzd, the bad the work of Ahriman.” All these bad herbs, plants, and trees, noxious, poisonous, and deadly—the dangerous classes in the vegetable kingdom—are of evil augury, and belong to the category of Plants of the Devil.
There are many trees and plants which emit emanations highly injurious, and in some cases fatal to life. Perhaps the most notorious of these is the deadly Upas, which rises in the ‘Valley of Death’ in Java, where it is said to blight all neighbouring vegetation, and to cause the very birds that approach it in their flight to drop down lifeless. No animal can live where its baneful influence extends, and no man durst approach its pestilential shade.
The Strychnos Tienté is the plant which yields the Upas Tienté, one of the Javanese poisons; it contains strychnia, and is as deadly as strychnine itself. The Upas Antiar is another Javanese poison—a bitter, milky juice, which acts violently on the heart.
The noxious exudations of the Manchineel-tree are said to cause certain death to those who rashly sleep beneath its foliage. The wonderfully fragrant blossoms of the Magnolia grandiflora emit so strong a perfume that, when inhaled in the immediate neighbourhood of a group in flower, it becomes overpowering. The Indians will never sleep under Magnolia in blossom.
Linnæus has mentioned a case in which the odour of the Oleander, or Rose-bay (Nerium Oleander), proved fatal. The foliage and flowers of this shrub will exercise a deadly influence on many quadrupeds: hence it is called in India the Horse-killer, and in Italy, Ass-bane.
The Elder-tree is reputed to exhale so narcotic a scent when in flower, that it is unwholesome for animals to rest under its shade; and it is considered unadvisable to plant one of these trees where its exhalations can be wafted into a sleeping apartment. On account of this pungent smell, country people often strike with Elder-boughs the leaves of fruit-trees and vegetables, in order that by being impregnated with the scent of the Elder-berries, they may prove noisome to troublesome insects.
The Jatropha urens, a native of Brazil, is a plant the properties of which are so noxious that its possession is absolutely fraught with danger. Not many years ago the Curator of Kew Gardens was one day reaching over a plant when its fine bristly stings touched his wrist: the first sensation was a numbness and swelling of the lips; the action of the poison was on the heart, circulation was stopped, and the unfortunate Curator soon fell unconscious. A doctor was fetched, who administered antidotes effectually; but no gardener could afterwards be got to come within arm’s length of the diabolical plant; and both it and another specimen, subsequently introduced, shortly afterwards mysteriously disappeared from the house.
The Nitraria tridentata, which is by some believed to be the Lotos-tree of the ancients, grows in the Desert of Soussa, near Tunis, and is called Damouch by the Arabs, who are fully alive to the semi-intoxicating qualities of its berries, which produce a state of lassitude similar to the infatuating food of the Lotophagi.
Alex. Pouchkine has given a vivid description