Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues & Assassins

"One Edgy Garden"

Note to self:  Before taking the kids to an exhibit of havoc wreaking plants, prepare them in advance so they know they’re not in any danger!   My rather precocious nine-year-old read the words rash and anaphylactic shock on one sign and asked loud enough for all of the other visitors to hear, “Are you trying to kill us?”

Despite this rough start, Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues & Assassins is a pretty cool exhibit.  Featuring over 30 plant species capable of a variety of physical harms including strangulation and intolerable pain, Wicked Plants takes visitors through a Victorian garden that appears welcoming at first glance but soon makes its darkness known.  It was amazing to learn how many harmful plants are part of the décor of homes and yards without their gardeners knowing the ill effects they produce.  Do you have a Pencil Cactus in your living room?  You may wish to don a “haz mat” suit before pruning it.  This thing has corrosive sap that causes severe rashes and eye irritation yet it is very popular in modern interior design!  Other plants in the exhibit had stinging hairs on them, emitted milky sap that burns skin and shed poison daggers.   Now that’s one edgy garden!

One inclusion in this toxic landscape didn’t surprise me but the discussion it created was unexpected.  It was Tobacco.  My daughter was astonished to learn that this plant incited a war.  When she asked how that was possible, I explained that Tobacco is addictive, when you see people smoking cigarettes it is because they like Tobacco (among other things in it) a lot.  We wound up spending a lot of time on this plant, mainly talking about the evils of smoking and how amazing it is that a plant could have so much power.   While other visitors will find the historic stories and folklore (like the one about the sister of a soon-to-be executed presidential assassin who attempted to smuggle an arsenic laden bouquet to her brother) surrounding so many of these plants fascinating, my family will come away with two sworn non-smokers.

In my opinion, older kids will get more out of this exhibit than those under 10.  So round up your middle schoolers and older teens who may be studying these species in science class and take them for this dark botanical history lesson.   Not only will they love it, so will you!

Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues & Assassins runs through October 30, 2011.