Poison

I have been reading a book this week at the Nature House, about poisonous plants. The ones we all know about are in there, Deadly Nightshade, the green bits of potatoes, tomato and rhubarb leaves, hemlock, although that was interesting because I now know how to identify it.
Being a technical kind of book it also had opium, marijuana and peyote as poisons, I hadn't really thought about them as such, but I suppose it depends how you define poison. I was surprised not to find Foxglove, I'm damn sure I've seen some around here somewhere.

I was surprised however, to discover that even without being drenched in e-coli infested slurry, spinach, the whole plant, counts as poisonous. It seems it contains a similar chemical to that in rhubarb leaves. In the normal course of things, I eat pounds of spinach, especially in salads and I haven't ever noticed any ill effects, however perhaps the evil compounds have been cultivated out as they tell us is the case with aubergines. I still have never been bold enough to cook aubergine without first salting it to draw out the bitter juices.

Then the section on mushrooms. I am always fascinated when the Fly Agaric - amonita muscaria - makes its appearance, partly because it is so striking, its appearance screams,
'Wanna take me on?' but a different Amonita, amonita virosa, caught my eye. Destroying Angel and deadly. It seems there is no recovery from this one, just as you think you have overcome it, your liver and kidneys shut up shop and a few hours later - so do you. And yet look at it, it looks so much like the kind of mushroom you'd eat. So innocuous.
It kind of astonishes me that vegetation can be as deadly as an animal. I'm sure you'd be more scared to be bitten by a venomous snake, and the end may come more quickly, but on t'other hand, with the mushroom you'd be just as dead, especially as I've watched 'Venom ER' and antivenins have been developed to most snake poisons, whereas according to Chris Thomas, no antidote is available to counteract the effects of the mushrooms' amatoxins.
The snake however would be coming at ya - assuming you had in some way annoyed it, whereas the lovely mushroom has to seduce you into eating it. I can understand that the snake is poisonous to protect itself, but why would a mushroom want to stop itself from being eaten? And how did it develop these deadly poisons?

Yesterday, I was at one and the same time horrified yet fascinated by this story in the Guardian about a couple and the man's children who were holidaying in Corfu and who have suffered poisoning of some as yet unknown origin. The two children have both died, both adults were found unconscious and the woman was in a coma. The causes being investigated are as wide apart as carbon monoxide and mushroom poisoning. But the reporting in this article is also odd. Why does it refer to 'the tourist' and this opening statement almost ignores the existence of her partner,
"A British tourist today came out of a coma apparently caused by poisoning that killed two children who were on holiday with her."
Bizarre and a horrible tragedy.

There are lots of things out there that are out to get us, although not generally unless we have rattled them first.
But that deadly pure white mushroom, haunting.