There are also historical and religious elements broader than folklore that are quite eye-opening, and that serve as interesting reminders about truth within reported history. There is a short introduction, but after this the book consists of an alphabetical compendium of plants. The author offers up science, history, and myth alike - I especially enjoyed the poetry that prefaced most of the entries. I found the writing very accessible and informative. I'm Asha and the one constant in my life is that I have always had an enormous, overflowing pile of books to read. Physically. In my house. Taking up all the space. Threatening to break the bookshelves. It's probably about time I read them. I’m undoubtedly a botanical gothic fan, so I’m compelled to include my newly released novel The Haunting of Willow Creek. The novel evokes a modern botanical gothic feel. Brimming with whispering willows, ghoulish paintings, and slithering roots, I intertwine ghosts, nature, and daylight horror along with a heavy dose of weeping willow folklore. Med-evil history of poisonous plants and fungi. I listened to the audiobook, but apparently the physical copy is beautifully laid out—sad I missed that.

Botanical Curses and Poisons - AbeBooks Botanical Curses and Poisons - AbeBooks

Have you ever wondered about the history behind poisonous plants? What about how they have been used throughout history for murder or even medicine before fully understood? Look no further than Botanical Curses and Poisons.At a fundamental level, we are all sustained by plants, either from the oxygen they supply or from the food they can provide or by using them to build shelters. But we would be foolish to think of them as passive lifeforms that can accept being munched by any passing animal. They have developed sophisticated defences to stop them from disappearing down the gullet of a herbivore. These defences can vary from the spiked leaves, sour-tasting stems all the way to the utterly lethal parts of some plants that can kill an animal in a short space of time.

Review: Botanical Curses and Poisons – A Cat, A Book, and A Review: Botanical Curses and Poisons – A Cat, A Book, and A

Fez Inkwright is an illustrator, author, and folklorist. Her greatest passions are botany, nature, primitive religions, and folklore, which flavour most of her work. For the past eight years she has produced work for children’s books, hand-drawn maps, and tattoo design, and now spends her time indulging in conservation work and writing. She lives in Bristol, UK, with two cats and several hundred bees. For more Fez merch head over to The Crow and Crown. More titles from Fez:Desirable for the stunning cover and gorgeous interior illustrations alone, I wanted to include this nonfiction book about the shadow-lives of plants. Fez Inkwright gives a brief history of poisons and then includes an A-Z of the dark side of plants. It’s a handy guide that I know will be by my side for inspiration for a long time to come! Plant Your Roots in Botanical Gothic I’ll be honest, at first a book about just poisons didn’t seem as wide of a topic as a book about herbal medicine in general, and so I was surprised to see that Botanical Curses and Poisons is actually quite a bit longer than Folk Magic and Healing. But describing it as a book about poisons is selling it short. Lots of plants can be poisonous but only in specific ways—maybe only a certain part of the plant is toxic or it’s dangerous only if prepared in a certain way. (Inky cap mushrooms, for instance, are safe to eat unless consumed with alcohol, at which point they become poisonous.) Plus, in addition to poisonous plants, it covers all sorts of plants with sinister history, ranging from uses in dark magic to mythological associations with death. The latter is actually a huge category, as there are all sorts of fascinating reasons a plant would become associated with death—perhaps it’s the favored flower of a goddess of death, or it might grow in graveyards, or it smells like rotting flesh, or maybe it just has a pale and spectral look that made people think of ghosts. Beans were associated with death in the British Isles because people noticed that more accidents happened in the mines during the season when bean plants flower, which was definitely caused by the beans and not the fact that mines were more dangerous during the rainy season! Other plants have built-in abilities that can feel sinister or malevolent. Cogon grass is very flammable and burns hotter than regular flames, an ability it uses to burn down the other plants around it to make room for cogon shoots to sprout in the newly barren earth. Today is my spot on the blog tour for 𝐁𝐎𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐀𝐋 𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐏𝐎𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐒; ᴛʜᴇ ꜱʜᴀᴅᴏᴡ-ʟɪᴠᴇꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴘʟᴀɴᴛꜱ by Fez Inkwright. Thank you to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours and Liminal 11 for sending me a copy of this beautiful book. Fez Inkwright is an illustrator, author, and folklorist. Her greatest passions are botany, nature, primitive religions, and folklore, which flavor most of her work. For the past eight years she has produced work for children’s books, hand-drawn maps, and tattoo design, and now spends her time indulging in conservation work and writing. She lives in Bristol, UK, with two cats and several hundred bees. Available As:

Botanical Curses and Poisons: The Shadow Lives of Plants Botanical Curses and Poisons: The Shadow Lives of Plants

Gamers never feel more present and alive than when their efforts come to fruition; GMs will weave crooked quests concerning the gathering of ingredients for poisons or curatives, players will brew concoctions of deadly verdance for the sake of good or ill. This is an essential companion for the darkly poetic, the riddler, the night elf. Imbue your Druids with dripping poison sap, your carefully whittled arrows with unspeakable banes, your potions with natural scourges. Create notable villains that offer vile physic - and wise player characters that plait thorns in their hair and might well have been raised in jagged-leaf nettle beds. Discover the folklore and history of our most malignant, toxic plants. Poisonings are among the most memorable deaths in history, from the Roman Empire to the Medieval era and beyond. Concealed and deliberate, it is a crime that must be planned in advance. And yet there is a fine line between healing and poisoning – Paracelsus argued that only the dosage matters! If you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison’, it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.’ I was surprised by most of this book. Some of these things I already knew, but even in the plants I read about that I thought I knew about, I learned unexpected things, whether it was mythology or historical usage or maybe a bit of both. It ended up being, quite frankly, one of the most illuminating plant books I’ve ever read. The accessible prose and the subject matter combined to create a book I both couldn’t put down and couldn’t stop thinking about.The facts about the different plants, and the folklore and mythology that are included make it feel like such a rich tapestry of storytelling.