As an author of murder mysteries, my job requires me to kill people – on paper, at least. Shooting someone with a gun or plunging a knife into his belly might prove more practical and efficient modes of murder than using poison, but I love poisons. Toxins are mysterious, sometimes undetectable, and require the murderer to plot and plan.
Anyone can buy a container of rat poison, but wild plants provide more interesting poisons, and you can sometimes find toxic plants in your backyard. I can readily find three deadly plants near where I live, so I decided to study these plants. I wanted to learn their specific poisonous compounds, the level of toxicity of the plants, and how each poison affects the human body. I also wanted to know if these plants had ever been used as murder weapons, either in the real or the entertainment world. What I learned, fascinated me.
A baneberry is a perfect, beautiful, little berry but it is also deadly poisonous. “Bane” means a thing that harms, interferes with, or destroys the welfare of something, and bane can also mean poison. As few as six baneberries can kill an adult human.
Baneberries grow in moist, shady areas, and on dry slopes. On Kodiak, they usually grow in the woods, often near salmonberry bushes. Baneberry plants reach 2 to 3 ½ ft. in height and have large, lobed, coarsely toothed leaves. In the early summer, small, white flowers bloom on the plant, and then later in the summer, the plants produce round, red or white berries. Each berry is attached to a separate, short, thick stalk. The berries are either round or oblong and appear glossy. The beautiful plants are sometimes used for landscaping. All parts of the baneberry plant are poisonous. According to folklore, it is safe to eat any berry birds can eat, but baneberries prove this saying false. Birds can safely consume baneberries while we cannot. Luckily, baneberries taste extremely bitter, so if you do pop one in your mouth, you will probably spit it out in seconds, and you would be very unlikely to eat enough berries to cause serious harm. We once had a guest eat a baneberry, and several minutes later, he asked what the shiny, red berries were called and said they tasted terrible. We kept a close eye on him, but he suffered no ill effects from his baneberry experience.
The first symptoms of baneberry toxicity include blistering and burning of the mouth and throat. These are followed by dizziness, sharp stomach pains, diarrhea, vomiting, and death by cardiac arrest or respiratory paralysis. The chemical ranunculin causes the toxicity of the baneberry. Ranunculin releases protoanemonin whenever the plant is damaged, such as by chewing. Protoanemonin is a skin irritant and causes blistering of the skin. When ingested, the chemical produces a similar effect on the mucous membranes of the esophagus, stomach, and intestines. Eventually, it affects the respiratory system and the heart.
Native Americans used the baneberry as a medicinal but knew of its toxic properties. Various tribes used the baneberry root to treat menstrual cramps, postpartum pain, and menopausal symptoms. Cheyenne Indians used an infusion of baneberry leaves to increase a mother’s milk supply, and they used the berry itself to induce vomiting. Some tribes applied the juice of the baneberry to the tips of their arrows to make their arrowheads deadlier.
I could find no reports of baneberries being used to murder someone, either in the real world or in literature. The berries would make a great murder weapon in one of my novels, but they would have to be sweetened and perhaps added to other berries to convince one of my characters to eat them. Perhaps the murderer could bake a rhubarb/strawberry/baneberry pie.
Monkshood includes several species of plants belonging to the family Ranunculaceae. It ranges throughout Alaska and can be found in meadows, thickets, on rocky slopes, and along stream banks. Monkshood is common on Kodiak Island.
Monkshood plants grow two-to-six-feet tall, depending on the species and the habitat. The dark green leaves appear palmate and lobed, and the vivid blue-purple flowers display five sepals, with one resembling a cylindrical helmet, or a “monk’s hood.”
All parts of the monkshood plant contain aconite, a deadly poison, and just three grains of the root will kill a hefty adult. Signs of aconite poisoning appear within less than an hour after ingestion. When an individual swallows a large dose of aconite, death occurs immediately, while smaller doses require two-to-six hours to kill a person. Initial signs of aconite poisoning include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, followed by tingling, burning, and numbness in the mouth and face and burning in the abdomen. If the poisoning is severe, the numbness and tingling will spread to the arms and legs, followed by motor weakness in the limbs. Other symptoms include an irregular heartbeat, sweating dizziness, difficulty breathing, a headache, and confusion. Death is usually caused by ventricular arrhythmia or paralysis of the heart or respiratory center.
All parts of the monkshood plant contain aconite, a deadly poison, and just three grains of the root will kill a hefty adult. Signs of aconite poisoning appear within less than an hour after ingestion. When an individual swallows a large dose of aconite, death occurs immediately, while smaller doses require two-to-six hours to kill a person. Initial signs of aconite poisoning include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, followed by tingling, burning, and numbness in the mouth and face and burning in the abdomen. If the poisoning is severe, the numbness and tingling will spread to the arms and legs, followed by motor weakness in the limbs. Other symptoms include an irregular heartbeat, sweating dizziness, difficulty breathing, a headache, and confusion. Death is usually caused by ventricular arrhythmia or paralysis of the heart or respiratory center.
As I mentioned, all parts of the monkshood plant are poisonous. The roots contain the most toxin, and it is extremely dangerous to ingest the roots or any part of the plant, but poisoning can also occur just by picking the leaves without wearing gloves. Aconitine toxin is easily absorbed through the skin. When the toxin is absorbed, the individual experiences no gastrointestinal symptoms. Instead, tingling starts at the point where the toxin was absorbed and spreads to the arm and shoulder before affecting the heart.
Probably the most common cause of monkshood poisoning is accidental ingestion of some part of the plant. Monkshood resembles and grows next to edible wild geraniums. Also, the root of the monkshood plant has been mistaken for a parsnip. In 2000, a medical examiner listed aconite poisoning as the cause of a suicide, and on July 30th, 2004, Canadian actor Andre Noble died after a camping trip when he accidentally ate monkshood. In 2008, an individual died four hours after eating a few monkshood flowers.
Various cultures have used monkshood as a medicine. It has been utilized as a heart and nerve sedative, a pain reliever, and a fever reducer, but the problem with using monkshood as a medication is that safe doses of aconite are rarely effective, and effective doses are lethal.
Many cultures used monkshood as arrow poisons. The Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) people, the first inhabitants of Kodiak Island, concocted a poison made from the roots of monkshood to tip the darts and spears they used to hunt humpback and fin whales.
I explored the toxic effects of Monkshood in my novel, Murder Over Kodiak, but I am hardly the first author to use this plant as a murder weapon. Monkshood is mentioned in Greek mythology, and Shakespeare refers to it in Henry IV Part II. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, Rudolph Bloom commits suicide with an overdose of aconite, and monkshood has been used as a murder weapon on TV shows such as Rizzoli and Isles, NCIS, Dexter, and American Horror story. In episode seven of the second season of the Game of Thrones, an assassin applies monkshood (or wolf’s bane) to his dart.
Botanists consider water hemlock the most poisonous plant in North America. Just a bite of the root will kill a human.
Both water and poison hemlock grow in Alaska, and both are deadly poisonous. Both species inhabit wet areas such as marshes, streams, and moist meadows. Water hemlock grows to a height of two to six feet, and poison hemlock reaches three to eight feet in height. Water hemlock has alternate, compound, oval leaflets with saw-toothed margins. The leaves of poison hemlock are lance-shaped with saw-toothed edges. Both species have small, lacy, white flowers arranged in umbrella-like clusters. The stems of the plants are hollow. The roots are tuberous and chambered and contain a yellow, oily, foul-smelling liquid.
The yellow, oily substance found in the roots is circutoxin, and it exists in all parts of the plant. When ingested, circutoxin depresses the respiratory system. Symptoms begin to appear within 15 minutes to an hour after ingestion and include salivation followed by diarrhea, severe stomach distress, and convulsions. Without treatment, death occurs within eight hours of ingestion, and even if a person survives hemlock poisoning, she may suffer permanent damage to her central nervous system.
Hemlock poisonings in children are often caused when kids use the hollow stem of the plant to make whistles or use the stems as pea shooters. Adults are sometimes poisoned when they mistake the roots of hemlock for wild parsnip or add hemlock leaves to a pot herb mixture. Poisoning has also occurred when campers have mistaken the leaves of water hemlock for some sort of wild marijuana and have smoked them. Livestock can be poisoned by hemlock when grazing the plants or drinking water near where hemlock grows. A poisoned animal can die in as little as fifteen minutes after ingesting hemlock. In Maine, on October 5th, 1992, a 23-year old man and his 39-year old brother were foraging for wild ginseng, when the younger man collected several plants growing in a swampy area and took three bites from the root of one of the plants. His older brother took one bite of the same root. Within 30 minutes, the younger man began to vomit and suffer convulsions. It took 30 minutes for the brothers to walk out of the woods and call for help. Emergency personnel arrived within 15 minutes, and by then, the younger brother was unresponsive and cyanotic with profuse salivation and intermittent seizures. EMTs rushed him to the hospital, but despite medical intervention, he died three hours after ingesting the root. The older brother appeared normal when he reached the emergency room, but he began to have seizures and suffer delirium two hours after eating the root. Doctors eventually stabilized him, and he survived the poisoning.
The suicide of Socrates in 399 BC remains the most famous case of hemlock poisoning. Socrates was found guilty of “refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state” and for “corrupting the youth.” The court sentenced him to death and ordered him to drink a cup of poison hemlock. Socrates became his own executioner. According to the story, Socrates cheerfully drank the poison while his students surrounded him. Socrates paced the room and lectured to his students until he could no longer stand, and then he sat and soon died.
Nature is beautiful but sometimes deadly. Most of us don’t nibble on plant roots while we hike in the woods, but it is surprising to learn some plants are not even safe to touch. Here on Kodiak, I try not to touch cow parsnip or nettles because the first will cause a burn on my skin and the second will cause instant pain followed by hours of tingling, but I remind myself I could die from touching monkshood or hemlock. The toxicity of monkshood and hemlock make them wonderful weapons for a mystery writer.
Which poison would you pick?
