Poisonous Plants
And seeing the forest for the trees.
Visit the English town of Alnwick in Northumberland and you’ll find The Alnwick Garden, a plot of land filled with plants that can kill you.
Featuring everything from monkshood, a flower so renowned its poison is said to be created by the Greek goddess Hecate, to Atropa belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, it’s a place you’d do well to stay away from.
However, The Alnwick Garden brings these deadly species together and, with a light warning not to smell, touch, or taste them, charges entry.
For less than £15 you can take a guided tour around 100 toxic and narcotic plants that could kill you while learning the details of “the world’s most high profile poison cases.”
If you’re feeling particularly trusting, you can even eat in the restaurant. Garden to table dining, anyone?
A look at Netflix’s documentaries tells you we’re obsessed with what can kill us. As humans, we’re enamoured by the macabre. We’re drawn to dark tourism.
The Alnwick Garden fits this. It’s fascinating. Alluring. Honestly, it sounds like a great day out.
But where Netflix might have a thing for true crime, plants are a different beast. We need them, we eat them, but we also know that ingesting the wrong ones could kill us. Their duality is embedded into our psyche. They’re a constant reminder that looks can be deceiving and not all beauty should be trusted.
They’re also powerful. We’ve all seen abandoned buildings reclaimed by nature, overtaken by stretches of lush green and interlocking branches. We’ve seen a Venus flytrap close its jaws on unsuspecting prey. Like creatures found in the deepest depths of the ocean, plants subvert the rules. They twist them. Do it their way. Make the world their own.
It’s no coincidence some are called invasive. Left alone and plants destroy. Before you know it essential vegetation has been pushed out and biodiversity has been altered.
Throughout history, we’ve seen these fears and feelings enter horror fiction.
John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids is the first that comes to mind. Published in 1951, it tells the story of carnivorous plants that invade earth after a freak meteor shower causes everyone who sees it to go blind.
Plants are closely connected to gothic literature. Think garlic flowers in Dracula or countless descriptions from writers about atmospheric, haunting flora.
Naturally, there are more modern takes. Without spoiling too much, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic talks of a sinister fungus in the rooms of High Place, a house in the Mexican countryside. T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead and The Ruins by Scott Smith are others that are frequently mentioned.
Last month, I finished Adam Nevill’s The Ritual. His description of the forest, its dense trees and endless wet leaves was so distinct I felt it weighing on me as I was reading. It was overbearing. Heavy. Relentless. A true show of the force of Mother Earth.
The forest felt like its own character, as much (if not more) of a threat to the group of friends hiking the Scandinavian wilderness than the ancient creature hunting them.
Last week, I was back in the UK. I spent some time surrounded by forests, walking through overgrown gardens and graveyards with headstones so old they’d sunk into the soil.
Despite being quiet, calming, I was reminded of the power of it all. Reminded that it was more than a collection of wood and leaves. I was a visitor, walking into something with presence.
Something that’s alive.
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/ JJW