Episode 306: The Atlas of Deadly Plants
Get your copy of The Atlas of Deadly Plants
If you’re after a print copy, you can order one from your favourite bookshop of choice: there’s a list of useful links here.
Prefer to listen? I’ve got you! The Atlas of Deadly Plants will be available right now on my Patreon and on Spotify, and will be coming soon to Audible.
More info about the book
‘The beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated world tour of the 50 most poisonous plants and fungi on the planet,’ according to the press release! I delve into the stories and folklore behing these incredible species and explain how they grow in the wild, as well as how humans have harnessed them in numerous ways over the centuries. Expect murders, witchcraft, folklore and some very scary poisons!
The incredible illustrations in the book are courtsey of Alice Smith (@aliceshole on Instagram) and the foreword is written by Dr Sarah E Edwards.
Want to stock The Atlas of Deadly Plants in your shop? Drop me a line and I’ll put you in touch with my publisher!
Part one: introducing The Atlas of Deadly Plants
Transcript - part one
[0:21]Introduction to Deadly Plants
[0:15]Are you ready to get deadly? Yes, of course you are. It's On The Ledge Podcast and I'm Jane Perrone. Hello and welcome to a special series of mini episodes dedicated to my new book, Atlas of Deadly Plants, just in time for Halloween.
[0:48]Watcher, how are you doing, everybody? I know it's been a moment, but I'm back, not for good, but just for a little run of episodes, mini episodes dedicated to the Atlas of Deadly Plants, botanical tales of the world's most intoxicating, poisonous, and dangerous specimens written by me with a forward by Dr. Sarah E. Edwards and illustrated by Alice Smith. If you want to get your hands on a copy, then do check the show notes where you'll find all the links. And the good news is this time I have made sure that this book will be available wherever you are. So if you are in North America, you should be able to order this from any of your normal book suppliers and hopefully in other parts of the world too. It's published by Greenfinch and you should be able to order it from your local bookshop of choice. Please do that and support your local indie bookshops. But if you're the kind of person who likes to listen to stuff rather than read stuff, there's also an audiobook version available. It's going to be available on my patreon so if you are a patreon subscriber at the legend or superfan level you will have access to this you can also get it on audible or spotify so.
[2:16]Please do support this book if you can in any way, shape or form. It was so much fun to write. And in each of these episodes over the next seven days, I'm going to give you a little insight into the book. Today's main course will be me reading the introduction to the book. So if you want to find out roughly what this is all about, this is a great place to start. So what is an atlas of deadly plants? Well, as the name suggests, it's a geographical guide. So we've split the world into regions and covered plants from each of those regions to a total of 50. There are 50 plants and in fact some fungi too in this book. And when it comes to the definition of deadly, we've not been too strict about this. We're talking about plants that will do you harm, will make you feel like death warmed up, if not actually killing you in some cases.
[3:20]So we've got everything from poison ivy to tobacco to peyote to white briny to black henbane. So if you want to find out about how these plants grow in the wild, the stories and folklore that have become attached to them over the ages, how they've been used as poisons, as medicines, as raw materials by us human beings, this is the book for you. And each of the 50 plants is accompanied by a gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous, I'm telling you right now, absolutely gorgeous picture, an illustration by an illustrator called Alice Smith. They're very gothic.
[4:04]If you are a tattoo type person, you might be inspired by this book. So that's what you get if you buy a print edition, some gorgeous illustrations as well. So I guess without any further ado I'm going to let you have a little taster of the introduction to the book this is the introduction that I've recorded for the audiobook and if you want more more more then skip on over to the show notes and get yourself a copy ordered I would love to have your support I know many of you were absolutely incredible in supporting Legends of the Leaf I think you're going to enjoy this book just as much. So please, if you have got a copy, leave a review. It means so much to have reviews on wherever you've ordered your book, whether it's audio or print.
[4:59]I love to hear from you. So do drop me a line if you want to tell me something that you liked about the book or tell me about a time that you were poisoned by a plant. It's on the ledge podcast at gmail.com.
[5:29]Author's Introduction One of my earliest childhood memories is of standing on a footpath, my face wet with tears, wondering if I was about to die. I'd wandered away while playing outside and couldn't quite remember how to get home. It was late summer in England, and the path linking two suburban streets was a green tunnel created by the canopies of the trees in the neighbouring gardens. I ate some tiny, shiny black berries dangling temptingly overhead, but seconds later it dawned on me that I had only the haziest idea of what they were, or if they were, in fact, deadly poisonous. A kindly passer-by asked what was wrong, and I pointed to the berries that I had snacked on. She reassured me that they were elderberries and harmless, and sent me back down the alleyway towards home.
[6:30]She was wrong about the berries. While elderberries, from the common elder tree, Sambucus nigra, are no deadly nightshade or foxglove, they do contain chemical compounds called cyanogenic glycosides, which our guts process into hydrogen cyanide. In small amounts, this induces nausea and in larger quantities can involve a trip to the emergency ward I felt fine as I toddled back home I'd only eaten a few berries after all I have since consumed elderberries many times But always make sure to cook them first, which renders them safe to eat.
[7:10]I only remembered this incident years later when researching the chemical make-up of elderberries for an article I was working on.
[7:18]It reminded me of two key points to keep in mind when considering whether a plant is poisonous or not, especially if you plan to eat it. The first is Paracelsus's saying, the dose makes the poison. You may not have heard of Paracelsus, a 16th century Swiss physician, but you will have grasped the practical implications of his words by the time you reach adulthood. Got a headache? You might take one or two painkiller tablets, but you know that taking 50 of them won't make the pain 50 times better. It will land you in hospital. It is the same with plants, which is why it is always worth eating any new foods in small quantities before you make them a regular part of your diet. The second point is this. Never rely on someone else's knowledge to identify a plant for you. The old forager's joke that everything is edible once isn't so funny when you start feeling a little odd a few minutes after eating a salad of leaves you thought looked like wild garlic. One of the key things I've learned through researching and writing this book is that many, many plant poisoning cases start with a forager mistaking a plant, any plant, for wild garlic.
[8:44]Plant poisonings as depicted in film and television are swift. No sooner has the deadly draught or dish passed the lips of the victim than they are writhing on the ground and stone dead soon after. The harsh reality is that most plant poisons take hours or days to do their work, with the initial symptoms often masquerading as other conditions, such as food poisoning. Now that I have scared you half to death, let me reassure you that just 5% of human poisoning cases reported to poison control centres in North America and Europe relate to plants. In today's world, we spend a lot less time interacting with plants than our forebears. And children, who usually account for the majority of poisoning patients who pitch up at hospital, spend far less time playing without parental supervision outside the home than in the past, unlike in the 1970s and 80s when I was busy snacking on raw elderberries. Today, we are far more likely to be poisoned by household chemicals, gases such as carbon monoxide and drugs, either legal or illicit, than by plants. I hope this does not put you off learning more about plants, poisonous or otherwise, because the more you come to know about a species, the more fascinating it becomes.
[10:09]From medieval scammers peddling white briny roots to the Roman soldiers felled by rhododendron-poisoned honey, the poisonous plants in this book will surprise, delight and horrify you by equal turns.
[10:24]Whole books can, and indeed have, been written about some of the species featured here, but I hope that this particular book will, like all good atlases, inspire you to plot your next foray into the fascinating realms of the plant kingdom.
[10:41]A warning. The information in this book about plant species and plant-derived medicines is included for reference purposes only. It is not intended to be used either as a guide for accurately identifying plant species in the wild or as a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. You should consult a qualified healthcare professional on any matters requiring diagnosis or medical attention, and before using any plant-derived medicines.
[11:32]A Cautionary Note I do hope you enjoyed that and i'll be back tomorrow to talk about something from the book specifically the ancient anesthetic known as dwale so tune in tomorrow for more from the atlas of deadly plants bye.
My new book The Atlas of Deadly Plants is out this week, published by Greenfinch, so I thought I’d celebrate by offering up a series of mini-podcast episodes digging into some of the themes and facts from the book - just in time for Halloween!
In this part I’ll be telling you a little about the book and giving you the chance to listen to the introduction so you can really get an idea of what it is all about!
First up - the vital info…
Part two: a TOXIC tree
Transcript - part two
[0:15]Hello and welcome to part two of the On The Ledge podcast, Atlas of Deadly Plants, series of minisodes, out just in the run-up to Halloween, just to get you in the spooky mood.
[0:30]Welcome to Atlas of Deadly Plants
[0:31]And in this amuse-bouche of an episode, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about Taxus baccata aka the European yew, a tree that we associate very much with cemeteries and churchyards we're going to find out why.
[0:51]First a little reminder if you want to listen to this book it's now up on my patreon so go and have a look you can buy it there and if you are a legend or a super fan you can go and listen to all 50 plants it's going up on Spotify and Audible in the next few days fingers crossed, unfortunately I don't yet have the rights to use the cover so it's got a temporary cover on there but if you search for my name in the next few days it should pop up and if you want to buy a copy of the print version then it should be available in all your local bookshops as well as the usual online outlets. So let's get cracking on with talking about a poisonous tree, the European yew. I start the chapter on yew talking about an ancient wooden spear dating back to about 420,000 years ago that was discovered back in 1911 in Clacton-on-Sea, a well-known seaside resort in Essex in England and it's this is considered by some to be one of the oldest wooden artefacts in the world.
[2:09]Already back in Paleolithic times, we were using you as a weapon material. And that's important because this is not an association that goes away. If you are a student of Shakespeare and you've read the play Richard II.
[2:29]You is described as double fatal in Richard II. Why? Well, because at the time it was well known that you, as well as being a poison, It was also a wood that was vital because it was the raw material for the longbow. So you needed a really strong and elastic wood to make a good longbow. And yew was it. And that is apparently one of the reasons why there aren't as many yew trees as there used to be across Europe, because we cut so many down to make bows over history. A little bit of botany here. So ewes are what we call a dioecious species, which means that a tree is either a male tree or a female tree. So the female trees are the ones that produce the arils, these bright red fruits, each with the very, very toxic seed inside.
[3:24]Birds and badgers like eating these, but the seed passes through them and then obviously helps make a new plant. The aral itself is not toxic although the seed inside is very toxic the male trees on the other hand well if you've ever passed by a ewe in spring and just been attacked by a massive cloud of yellow pollen well that is how you know that you're encountering a male tree because those the ones that release the huge amounts of pollen yeah not good if you suffer from hay fever.
[3:59]Why do they turn up in churchyards? Well, there's so much association, so much folklore around the you as a tree of death and resurrection. So they're very intimately connected with funerals.
[4:15]And we don't really know. There's no one reason why these trees were planted in churchyards. One idea, this one's a bit out there, but people thought that the vapours released by dead bodies would be neutralised by the yew tree. Also, it may have just been a practical thing that this sort of very sturdy tree protected the church from storms. We also hear sometimes that by having poisonous ewes, it would stop farmers from letting their livestock into the churchyard to have a nice feed on the grass.
[4:56]One other one just to throw into the mix. At one point before we could get hold of palms in the UK, people used yew branches. So having a nice convenient yew tree was another reason to have one planted in your churchyard. Again, it's a symbol of death and resurrection. One final theory on the yew trees in churchyard was that they were there before the church. So the idea that the Druids who came before Christianity obviously saw yew trees as a sacred tree, had them planted in their places of worship and then Christianity came along and supplanted those places of worship with churches and the yew trees remained. [5:40]How Yew Trees Can Kill [5:36]So this is a tree that's very ancient and venerable in many ways. How is a yew tree going to kill you if you consume it rather than being killed by a yew longbow? Well the plant is full of taxene alkaloids which attack the heart basically and cause heart to malfunction and go arrhythmic and you die if you take enough of it so yes it's intimately connected with the heart we don't get poisoned very much by you these days although it is worth bearing in mind that if you have small children they might be attracted to those little red berries so caution is required.
[6:19]So if you want to read more about yew trees, do check out the Atlas of Deadly Plants. The illustration on this one I particularly love. There is a skull in there. There is a heart and there is a longbow. So you've got all the main components of this story in a beautiful illustration. And I just think it's such an amazing tree as well. If you ever go into a churchyard, have a look for a yew tree. There are some really ancient ones around the country in here in the UK. And if you Google ancient yews, you'll come up with lots of examples of ancient yew trees that you can go and visit and make a link with our ancestors. So I hope that's whetted your appetite for a little bit more of the Atlas of Deadly Plants. I'll be back tomorrow with news of a competition where you can win one of five copies of the book. See you then. Bye. Thank you.
In this mini-episode I talk about Taxus baccata, the European yew, which has a long history of being used as a poison, but it’s also been used since prehistory as a raw material for weapons. If you want to learn more about the Clacton spear, one of the oldest wooden artefacts in the world, check this paper out.
The Clacton Spear. Photograph: Geni
Part three: Win a copy of The Atlas of Deadly Plants
Transcript - part three
[0:15]Hello and welcome to part three of my Atlas of Deadly Plants Minnesota series running up to Halloween and today it's competition time so I have five copies
[0:28]yes five copies of the book to give away to you wonderful people. How do you get your hands on a copy of the book? [0:39]Well there's going to be two ways. I'm going to put up an Instagram post which will be live today at j.l.perrone on Instagram. If you go and make sure you're following me and put a comment on there with the word Atlas, then you will be entered into the draw. And you can also email me at ontheledgepodcast at gmail.com. You have until midnight on the end of Halloween to enter the competition.
[1:11]And I will pick five winners at random to win the book. How magical would that be to have a copy of this book to scroll through and delight all of your senses and to celebrate the competition I'm going to give you three random facts from the book first random fact from the book I think that Arum Maculatum Lords and Ladies is probably the wild plant in the UK that has probably the most number of common names it has absolutely loads from poison berry and hobble gobbles to wake robin and my favourite and probably the most.
[1:54]Widespread, which is cuckoo pint. Yes, I said pint, not pint. Pint comes from the old English word pintle, which means penis, while cuckoo means lively. Yes, this plant's common name was literally lively penis. And yes,
[2:10]it was used as an aphrodisiac. So that's fact one. Fact two. One of the lovely English common names for the foxglove, which we all know and love as a very poisonous plant, it was known as flop dock and poppers. And there was a custom where people would close off the end of the sort of the bell shaped flower and push the ends together until there was a popping sound so that the bloom breaks. I really want to give that a try next summer when I get my hands on a foxglove
[2:42]to see if I can make the flower pop. And the final fact is about a plant that's sometimes grown as a house plant or more often a conservatory plant and that's the flame lily gloriosa superba it's a member of the culture casea family and contains the alkaloid colchicine which is particularly concentrated in the tubers and the tubers of these plants are quite odd they are often boomerang shaped so they are long thin tubers and they're boomerang shaped i'd love to see a boomerang shaped tuber it sounds very cool and this plant which comes from parts of africa the indian subcontinent and southeast asia has been used as an arrow poison amongst other things very beautiful flower too so that's my final fact and that's your lot for the atlas of deadly plants today i'll be back tomorrow with more.
I have FIVE copies of the book to give away to lucky listeners. If you’d like to enter the competition, you can either visit my Instagram post, make sure you are following me and comment with the word ATLAS - or email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com with the subject line ATLAS COMP.
The deadline for entering is midnight on Halloween, Friday October 31 2025. I’ll announce the winners on Instagram on November 2.
Part four: treacherous remission
Transcript - part four
[0:15] Hello and welcome to on the ledge podcast the atlas of deadly plants minisodes number four i hope you've entered the competition if you haven't done so already check the minisode episode three yesterday's episode to find out how you can enter to potentially win one of five copies of this book.
[0:48] Today is a short but sweet episode about some of the terms that I use in the book. There's quite a lot of jargon in the world of poisonous plants and I thought I'd break down a couple of interesting terms for you today.
[1:03] The first one is called treacherous remission. Treacherous remission what on earth does that mean well in a nutshell it means when you think you're getting better and actually you are getting worse and need to go to the hospital quick smart so treacherous remission often occurs in poisoning cases particularly fungus poisoning cases where you start off with gastrointestinal symptoms so you think you've got food poisoning or a tummy bug because you're throwing up or you've got diarrhea or your stomach is sore and.
[1:44] Unless you connect it to something that you've eaten in the form of perhaps a foraged plant, you don't realise that you've been suffering from a plant poisoning. So you mistake the symptoms for gastro and then that goes away and you start feeling better. And unfortunately, you are then likely to not seek medical help. Unfortunately, in many cases, this is the moment at which the toxins are really getting to work on the rest of your body. And that can be very serious. Treacherous remission is definitely something that happens in an already difficult situation for medics where they are often on a detective hunt to try to figure out what you've eaten. If you don't know what you've eaten and you can't identify it, it can be a real puzzle. As I say, lots of the symptoms echo symptoms of other conditions.
[2:45] To give you an example from the book, the deadly webcap, Cortinarius rubellus, is one of those species where often treacherous remission will occur with poisoning cases by this particular one. Deadly webcap symptoms, if you've eaten one of these, it can take 2 to 14 days until the symptoms turn up. So by the time you start vomiting and feeling sick, you make no link with that mushroom that you thought you knew as an edible that you ate a couple of weeks ago and then unfortunately the toxins are working on your organs particularly your kidneys so yeah treacherous remission I don't want to scare you because as I say in the introduction to the book plant poisonings are relatively rare these days but if you think you've eaten something in the way of a mushroom and you start to get gastrointestinal distress,
[3:39] please do seek medical assistance. The second term that I want to tell you about in this episode is called therapeutic index or therapeutic range. And that just means the amount of a medicine that you have to take.
[3:55] For it to be effective and for you not to overdose. So lots of the plants in this book have been used for some form of medicine, Western or indigenous medicine. And it's all very nice to think, oh, great, well, perhaps these plants can help us. Well, yes, but oftentimes the reason why we don't use them anymore in the modern age is because they have a very narrow therapeutic range. And that just means it's very easy to overdose. So you end up taking too much and it does you harm rather than good. And that's why therapeutic range is really important when we're thinking about drugs that we're taking.
[4:37] And making sure that we get the right dose is absolutely vital. So that's a couple of terms that might stand you in good stead next time you think you've been poisoned by a plant. I'll be back tomorrow with some more fascinating stuff from the Atlas of Deadly Plants. But in the meantime, go now and enter my competition to win a copy. It's only open until midnight on Halloween. So 2025, I should say, just in case you're listening back in the archive. So go and enter the competition now or maybe just go and buy yourself a copy of my new book. I think you're going to like it. Bye.
This episode’s coming out a few hours early as I have a long day working in London tomorrow and won’t have time to get this done!
In today’s minisode I am talking about two interesting terms from the book - ‘treacherous remission’ and ‘therapeutic range’. Both things to bear in mind if you are ever in the unenviable position of thinking you have been poisoned by a plant!
Part five: the pea that’s a biological weapon
Transcript - part five
[0:15] Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast, the Atlas of Deadly Plants, part five. Yes, we're at part five already. And in today's episode, you get another chunk of audio from me. And speaking of audio, if you're wondering where the audio book is on Audible and Spotify, well, so am I. It takes a while for it to be approved. It hasn't yet been approved on either of those platforms as I speak. But I will add the links into the show notes the minute they are. So you will get a chance to listen to the whole of this book. But in this Minnesota, if I can call it that, we're going to be having a little soup song of writing about a particular poisonous plant. More specifically, a poisonous pea.
[1:15] Now, you may well know that the castor oil plant Ricinus Communis produces something called ricin, which is on the UN list of biological weapons. So quite a powerful poison. But there is another poison produced by a plant that is even more deadly than ricin. And its name is Abrin and it comes from Abrus precatorius, the rosary pea. It's much less well known than its poisonous partner. And I'll explain why in the chapter about Abrus precatorius.
[1:56] I hope you enjoy this. Have a listen. And if you would like to get your hands on a copy of the print version of the book, do check out the show notes where you'll find a link to go and buy yourself a copy. Or you can hang on in there for the audiobook on Audible and Spotify and other audiobook platforms. Or if you want it right now, you can go and buy it from my Patreon,
[2:22] where I think it's $7.99 right now. And you can listen through Patreon. on so it's up to you but I'd love you to get all of this book into your hands and or ears and yes I'd love to hear what you think of it too please do go and leave a review in the usual places right anyway on with Abrus Precatorius.
[2:54] Rosary pea. Latin name, Abrus precatorius. Family, Fabaceae. Native to Africa, Middle East, Asia and Australia. The seeds of the rosary pea are unusually uniform, extremely hard and deadly poisonous. This species is not closely related to the castor oil plant in genetic terms. In chemical terms though, its major toxin, abrin, is almost identical to the castor oil plant's ricin. Only abrin is even more deadly. A lethal dose of abrin is measured at 0.1 to 1 microgram per kilogram, whereas ricin's is between 5 and 10 micrograms per kilogram. Eating just one or two seeds is sometimes enough to kill you.
[3:51] Both plants are so deadly they are classed as biological weapons, yet ricin is the substance that has been more often deployed in this way, the main reason being its greater availability. The rosary pea remains largely a wild plant. It is native to large parts of Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Australia, but has spread to other tropical regions as an invasive weed. It has not been cultivated en masse by humans, Whereas castor oil plants are grown by the million to produce castor oil, leaving the ricin-rich by-product widely available as a potential source for manufacturing poison. Unlike the castor bean, the seeds of the rosary pea are a genuine bean, as the species is a member of the bean family, Fabaceae. Where the castor bean is relatively dowdy, rosary pea seeds are beautiful. Scarlet with a black patch around the hilum, a small scar that marks the spot where the seed was joined to the pea-like pod.
[5:00] The plant is a twining climber that grows up to 3 metres, 10 feet long. Pretty pink flowers set against finely cut foliage precede the seeds, which appear as the pods burst open when dry. It's an opportunist plant, often proliferating on land disturbed by human use, such as roadsides, and growing rapidly in areas where vegetation has been cleared by forest fires.
[5:28] Unfortunately the smart ladybird livery of its seeds attracts young children who assume they will taste as good as they look just like caster beans the seed coating is so leathery and hard that it is possible to eat a rosary pea seed without being poisoned just as long as you do not chew it to release the toxins but this is definitely not something to try at home nonetheless less. Like ricin, abrin is a toxic protein that works by blocking human cells from the vital function of producing their own proteins. The symptoms of rosary pea poisoning are just the same as for the castor oil plant.
[6:10] Diarrhea and vomiting followed by heart problems, convulsions and organ failure. There are many reported cases of rosary pea poisoning, both accidental and purposeful but the plant also had a history of being used for a particular kind of malicious poisoning known as sui or sutari that peaked in the 19th century mainly targeted at cattle but also sometimes used for murdering people the seeds were crushed processed and dried into needle-like shapes two to three centimeters three quarters to one inch long which were then injected into the skin.
[6:51] Rosary pea has played two different but vital roles in the world of jewellery. Long before electronic scales, jewellers in the Indian subcontinent needed a way to accurately measure gemstones and precious metals. They realised that, unlike other beans, rosary pea seeds are remarkably consistent in weight, so they began to be used as a unit of measure that is still in operation today. They were known as rati or rati, from the Sanskrit word ratika. Each rati weighed 0.182 grams, which is equivalent to 0.9 carats. Meanwhile, the rosary pea's beauty has earned it a role as a component in jewellery, turned into necklaces, bracelets and rosaries, as the scientific name precatorious, meaning prayerful, implies. This carries a risk, as the seeds are so poisonous that chewing on a necklace of rosary pea seeds could land you in hospital. In 2011, visitor attraction the Eden Project in Cornwall, England, issued an urgent recall notice for bracelets they had sold made from the seeds of the rosary pea. One of their own horticulturists spotted them in the Eden Project's shop, recognised them as poisonous and raised the alarm. Thank you.
[8:16] The rosary pea has a tradition of helping as well as harming.
[8:21] Various parts of the plant have played an important role in the traditional medicines of its homelands, with many different applications recorded in scientific literature. The seeds are processed to remove the toxins and used as an aphrodisiac. The leaves are used to treat coughs and colds, and the root is used to treat malaria, snakebite and stomach pains. Opinions vary as to how poisonous the leaves are They are reported to taste sweet and are taken as an alternative to licorice as they contain glycyrrhizin the same chemical that gives licorice root its distinctive flavour So much so that the rosary pea has the alternative name of Indian licorice Scientists are still exploring the chemical compounds found in the rosary pea but have found it has the potential to destroy cancerous cells.
[9:14] The weatherman. There is one rather strange coda to the Rosary Pea story. There was a time when this plant was thought to be so good at predicting the weather that thousands of plants were transported around the world to create weather stations, capable of predicting not only when rain was going to fall, but the coming of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions too, with an early warning of around 48 hours. The project was the work of Austrian scientist Joseph Novak so confident was he that he took out a patent for his idea in 1887 put simply his theory was that leaves held horizontally meant that the weather was meant that the weather was about to change vertical leaves meant good weather while droopy leaves meant bad weather although the leaves of the rosary pea do indeed move, as do those of many species of the bean family. Tests carried out on the plants by scientists at Kew Gardens in London did not deliver the kind of accuracy promised by the professor, and his grand scheme never came to pass, soon superseded by more accurate methods of weather prediction.
Find out all about the powers of the rosary pea - Abrus precatorius - the less famous relative of the castor oil plant, source of ricin, as I read another extract from The Atlas of Deadly Plants.
Part six - my spooky recommendations
Transcript - part six
[0:16] Hello and welcome to On The Ledge Podcast, the Atlas of Deadly Plants, minisode series, part six.
[0:27] Yes, Halloween is close, people. And in this mini episode, I'm going to be talking about where I go when I'm looking for spooky satisfaction, when I want a good spooky story.
[0:46] And it reminds me Halloween is tomorrow I do need to go and buy some sweeties as we traditionally call them here in the UK candy that's an Americanism we try to avoid although I think probably most people do call it candy these days where I live is very very big on trick or treating because we get people I've seen people arriving in taxis with their children to come and trick or treat in the part of town that I live in which is actually a really lovely reflection of the fact that it's a nice neighborhood for trick-or-treating and very welcoming and there's always lots of sweeties to be harvested by the children extra brownie points if you've got a really cool costume and you know like the rule is if you see a lit pumpkin outside someone's house and decorations then you know you can go and knock on that door but if there's no lit pumpkin you don't so that means people who don't want to be disturbed on halloween or if somebody's not into halloween for any number of different reasons aren't disturbed and that actually works really well, I don't usually dress up for Halloween. If I was going to dress up, I think if I had the time.
[2:00] And could make the effort, I think I would love to dress up as a string of pearls
[2:04] because that is the ultimate plant nightmare, right? But it would be cool to dress up as one.
[2:09] You know, I'd have like a pair of braces with a terracotta pot kind of attached and then make the string out of green pom-poms and have loads of those coming down the outside it'll be so much fun to do but yeah not going to happen because I'm not that creative but maybe that's an idea for one of you who's a little bit more creative than me now I want to tell you before I forget about the competition to win a copy of the book the Atlas of Deadly Plants I've got five copies to give away and it's open until the 31st of October 2025 at midnight so that's tomorrow night Halloween night so please you can email me on the ledge podcast at gmail.com if you want to enter or go to my Instagram post linked in the show notes make sure you're following me and comment there the word atlas good luck I hope you win and I will announce.
[3:10] The winners on my Instagram after the competition has closed also in the show notes are details of how to get hold of this book so if you don't win in the comp you can get your hands on a copy or you can listen to the audiobook i'm still waiting for spotify and audible to get their fingers out their virtual fingers and put my audiobook out but it is available if you are a patreon subscriber at the legend or super fan level or you can buy a copy from my Patreon if you're not a member.
[3:43] So please do consider that if you prefer to hear rather than read.
[3:48] Now, in this episode, I want to tell you a little bit about the spooky stuff I love, because one of the reasons why I wanted to do this book is it's got lots of spooky stuff in it. There is lots of kind of slightly grisly things.
[4:02] There's lots of witchy things in here. Folklore. I love all that stuff. And I just wanted to mention a few places that I go to get my spooky fix, just in case you've read my book from cover to cover and still need more spooky stuff. So this is not going to be exhaustive. It's going to be a few picks from me that might inspire you. And I'd love to know in the comments on my show notes what you love in the way of spooky stuff too. You may have your own suggestions to add to the mix. And I'm sitting here in the dark recording this for you which is quite putting me in the mood actually and I guess I can date my fascination with spooky stuff time travel uh weird shit back to my childhood I loved things like the x-files oh my gosh I remember watching that first episode of Twin Peaks when I was a teenager oh my gosh.
[5:09] My heart was just all over the place I adored that show even when I was even younger I used to love a show called Rent-A-Ghost which was a show about a troop of ghosts who were hired to haunt people looking back at it now it's quite hilarious but I loved that show as a child and now as an adult I'm definitely a super fan of one particular BBC TV show can you guess which one it is well i'm actually a super fan of two shows from the bbc with a spooky bent the first is ghosts i have been to the house where ghosts is filmed i've walked those what are they called floorboards i've walked those floorboards i love that show just don't mention the american version to me because i will not have that name spoken in my presence i got through about five minutes of it and oh my gosh just no anyway the uk ghosts is amazing i love all the characters robin the.
[6:21] And Thomas the poet I love them all so that's definitely a show that scratches an itch when it comes to spooky stuff and comedy I also love a show called Inside Number Nine now nine series of this have been made but it's recently finished it's by the geniuses genii that are Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton I have loved them since forever back in the day when they were doing The League of Gentlemen in the I guess it was late 90s early 2000s and this show Inside Number Nine is an anthology show so every episode is a standalone.
[7:03] The 12 Days of Christine is the episode I would pick out to watch first if you want the very best. It's an absolute masterpiece. If you just want to laugh your socks off check out Nana's Party in series five I've also seen the stage show so yes I'm definitely a super fan of that show as well if you want a podcast then I'm going to recommend Haunted which again is not currently being made it was made by a podcast company called Panoply and it stars Danny Robbins who is actually the presenter of the current BBC show Uncanny but I preferred haunted and there's a story in there about the South African guy that absolutely, shit me up if I can put it that way terrifying and again it had to do with time so that would be my recommendation and also I must give a shout out to Weird in the Wade by Nat Doig which is It's actually the stories come from my county of Bedfordshire. And Nat is brilliant at setting the scene and dramatising the stories that she tells. So do check that one out. Probably a little bit less well known, but definitely worth checking out.
[8:23] If you like an audiobook, then I would absolutely recommend Kobnachal Brooksmith reading the Rivers of London series of novels by Ben Aronovich. It's a kind of urban fantasy series with the main character, Peter Grant. He is a young copper, young policeman who sees a ghost and then ends up becoming part of a kind of little unit of the Met Police that deals with magical incidents.
[8:53] And I absolutely love everything about this series. It's so good and
[9:00] has everything I love from time travel to.
[9:03] Magic to I think there's even circuses in there which is another obsession of mine I just think it's a wonderful series brilliant as audiobooks mainly because of the delivery of Cobner Holbrook Smith's dialogue it's can't be surpassed so do check that out and if you like to read novels I would recommend Kaylan Bradley's The Ministry of Time and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life both of which deal with time travel in a really amazingly unique way and I love both of those stories so much and then finally as you will probably know if you are a long-term listener to the show I read A Christmas Carol every year at Christmas time and I even did it for the podcast if you delve back in the archive you'll find that and I just absolutely love that story it will never get stale for me as a spooky story and I just love Dickens delivery of it so that's my other spooky recommendation maybe you could go listen to me reading some of it so that's my little spooky ideas list for today I'm going to be back tomorrow for the final episode where I'm going to be telling you about the one time that I thought I saw a ghost.
[10:29] So until then, bye.
As Halloween draws near, I am recommending lots more sources of spookiness that I love! Let me know in the comments your own recommendations for even more spooky stuff!
Rentaghost (BBC TV series from the 80s)
The X Files and Twin Peaks were my fave TV shows for spookiness as a teen
I adore the BBC TV Show Ghosts (UK version only!) and Inside No 9 (check out The 12 Days of Christine - it’s a masterpiece!) - if you want to visit the house where they filmed Ghosts, it is called West Horsley Place
When it comes to podcasts, check out the Haunted podcast by Panoply and Weird in the Wade
Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London audiobooks read by Kobna Holbrook-Smith are brilliant
The novels The Ministry of Time by Kailane Bradley and Life After Life by Kate Atkinson are also must-reads if you love timey-wimey things!
Don’t forget you can listen to my version of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens on On The Ledge!
Part seven - the laughing man
Transcript - part seven
[0:15] Hello and welcome to the final mini-episode in my Atlas of Deadly Plants mini-series. And in this episode, I'm going to tell you a ghost story, a short, personal ghost story of my own, as a little way of rounding off this series of minisodes. And, appropriately, it's a little tale for Halloween. It really is short and sweet and I do hope you enjoy it. So, let's go. On with the story.
[0:57] As a child, I grew up in Amersham, which is a town in the home county of Buckinghamshire. And that just means one of the counties around London. And in fact, my town had a direct link to London via the Metropolitan Line, the underground railway that extended out into the countryside with Amersham at the end of the line. Now, like most places in England, we had our own fair share of ghost stories and spooky hauntings that happened in the area. Indeed, I'm sure there were some hauntings linked to a road called Gore Hill, which was supposedly named after a battle with Danish invaders that produced so much bloodshed that the gore, the blood, literally ran down the hill. I also used to walk my dog in a field that was home to the Martyrs Memorial. The memorial was actually a large stone obelisk, but the place where the martyring happened was always, in my knowledge, as told by local people.
[2:16] About 100 yards away in the field. An oblong of ground in an arable field that was completely different from the rest of the field. It was an indentation in the ground with just weeds and overgrown grass growing there. Never cultivated because it was believed that crops wouldn't grow there on the site of this place where people from the town were burned to death for their religious beliefs. And indeed it's a matter of historical record that some of these people's children were made to light their pyres, And I do remember always feeling a thrill of fear passing that site. And I don't think the dog would ever actually venture onto that patch of ground. It just seemed to be completely inaccessible and sad.
[3:23] But my childhood was unremarkable in many respects. We lived in a cul-de-sac which to non-british readers just means a road that is closed off at the end so as a result it was a really quiet street you didn't get through traffic because there was nowhere to go.
[3:44] And I grew up as a young child in the 1970s when there was a period where economic instability meant there were power cuts of several hours every week. And as a small child, I don't think I really understood what was going on. But I do have a couple of memories linked specifically to those power cuts. And they both involve staring out of my bedroom window, which was the only bedroom in the house that was at the front of the house, pointing out onto our quite large front garden and the road beyond. And one memory is a really happy memory, a Christmas memory. As in many parts of the UK, the Rotary Club, a local charitable organisation, would do a Santa's sleigh every year and they'd dress up a car like Santa's sleigh and they'd have a Santa sitting in it and they'd dress up some kind of float as Santa's sleigh and they'd have a Santa sitting in there and the volunteers would come along and knock on the door and ask for donations for the charity and Santa would be there handing out sweets and I remember this one year I must have been I can't have been more than about three or four standing at my window and it was pitch black because obviously it was.
[5:11] December in the UK by four o'clock it's dark in the UK at that time and standing by this window in the dark and the street was dark because no street lamps were working we were in a power, and suddenly this glow started to form at the end of the road.
[5:34] And slowly it got brighter and brighter and there was a noise of carols coming down the road. And as I looked, I could see it was Santa's sleigh all lit up. And there were carols being sung from some hidden speakers somewhere on the float. I remember the excitement of rushing downstairs to get these boiled sweets. And yeah, so I remember this float coming down the road and then coming to the end of the cul-de-sac near where my house was turning around and then going back down the street and as a young child it was magical now I never believed in Santa which kind of makes me a bit sad now but I never believed Santa was real as a child I guess I was such a pragmatist and I don't really believe that ghosts are real however I love the frisson that a ghost story brings and as I said yesterday I have had an experience at that very same window which is I think my only genuinely, inexplicable moment so I'm going to tell you about it and I'll leave it up to you to, decide what actually happened but it, but it is stamped in my memory to this day.
[7:01] So reminder, this is the 70s. At night, your bedroom was cold. I remember waking up and there being ice on the window every morning, feathery patterns of ice that were formed. And it would be a while before the house would heat up because you just would have the heating off in the wintertime at night. But this night it wasn't frosty. It was pouring with rain. that kind of rainfall that you get that it just seems like it's going to go on forever, and i must have been asleep lying in my bed but for reasons i know not i woke up got out of bed and went to the window.
[7:51] I don't remember if there were curtains, if I opened the curtains, but I remember looking out. Now, outside the bedroom window was our front garden with a wonderful conifer that would be lit up with white candle lights every Christmas by my dad, who worked in lighting.
[8:11] So he prided himself that the tree looked absolutely gorgeous. But beyond our front garden and the lawn the street was lit by classic 1970s street lights and they'd be lit all night time long apart from when there was a power car, and there was one of these quite close to our driveway just to the side and just next to a silver birch tree one of my absolute favorite trees so you can imagine the wonderful, arching branches of the silver birch that used to be lit up by this street lamp, on this night though it was hammering i mean hammering with rain and i looked out the window, and there right under the streetlight in the pouring rain was a man.
[9:10] He was dressed in what I can only describe as Victorian garb. The kind of thing you'd see an extra wearing for a film set in Dickensian London. And he was a large man with those big sideburns that you used to get in Victorian dramas. And some kind of hat, like a sort of a Pete's hat, I think it was. But the thing that was most noticeable about this man was he was laughing. He had his mouth wide open. He was a big chap. He had big jowls. And his mouth was wide open. And he was just letting rip, laughing and laughing. In the pouring rain in the middle of the night and I remember just standing there and watching for I don't know how long, and then at some point I must have gone back to bed.
[10:32] I'm just so full of questions. Was I suffering from sleep paralysis? Was I just seeing a person who'd been on a heavy night out coming home from the pub who was just having a laugh? Was it just a total dream? Was it just a dream that I dreamt? But it seemed so real. I can remember the rain, the raindrops pouring down his face and going into his mouth. Who was this guy?
[11:04] I do hope you enjoyed that tale it's all true but as i say i think i was probably having a nightmare or a sleep but you can make of it what you will and if you're interested in hearing more about gore hill and the martyrs who were put to death in the reign of henry the eighth for their crime of wanting to read the Bible in English, then I'll put some links in the show notes so you can find out more.
[11:40] That is all for my mini episodes about the Atlas of Deadly Plants. I do hope you've enjoyed them. And if you have, I'd love it if you could leave a comment or a review on apple podcasts or spotify and if you've got a copy of my book already please go and leave a review it's so important and i'd love to know what you think of the book.
[12:11] If you're listening to this on Halloween, then you've got till midnight GMT to enter my competition to win one of five copies of the book. And I'm hoping to make a couple more episodes of On The Ledge in the next few months. I'm sorry that I can't make one every week like I used to, but I'm keeping the fires burning. The On The Ledge fires are burning. it's a small flame right now but you never know when we'll be back to a huge bonfire of excitement once more because you still love indoor plants i still love indoor plants and there's always something new to talk about so thank you for listening whether you have been here since episode one in 2017 or if you're a brand new listener thank you for being here and have a great Halloween.
[13:07] Bye.
In this final instalment you'll hear a personal spooky story from my childhood,. about something that I saw from my bedroom window in the middle of the night. Who was the laughing man? Let me know your theories!
If you'd like to find out more about Gore Hill and the Martyrs burned on a pyre in Amersham in the reign of King Henry VIII, visit this page on the Amersham Museum website.
Music credits
Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and Namaste by Jason Shaw.