Magnolias are some of the most ancient flowering plants on the planet, with fossils dating as old as ninety-five million years. Scientists have used computer models to trace flower evolution back to the first flowers, and they think these flowers would have had a structure similar to magnolia flowers.

Here’s a little plant timeline. Life on Earth began in the water, and plants are no different, with photosynthetic algae giving rise to mosses and other bryophytes that would have lived close to water, but not in the water. To colonize the land, plants needed a vascular system that could carry water from sources underground to stems, branches, and leaves. The first vascular plants were called gymnosperms, these are today’s conifers and cycads, like pine trees and sego palms (not actually palm trees) respectively. Gymnosperms don’t have flowers or fruit, instead they have cones. Each cone is made up of scales that protect a seed. When the seeds are mature, the cone will open so the seeds can be dispersed.

Magnolia fruit looks very much like a gymnosperm’s cone when it first develops from the flower. As it matures and dries, the cone-like fruit will open at each scale and a seed pops out. These fruits are classified as aggregate fruits, like blackberries, raspberries, or strawberries. None of these are actual berries, by the way, a berry must have several seeds inside a fleshy fruit, like blueberries, tomatoes, and oranges. If you picture a strawberry, those little seeds are on the outside of the fruit, ergo, an aggregate fruit.

So it’s the flower that differentiates the magnolia from the early vascular plants, conifers and cycads. These early flowers would have been pollinated by beetles, because bees hadn’t evolved yet. This is probably why magnolia flowers tend to be cup or bowl shaped and have thick tepals.

Ok, quick aside, tepals are more evidence that the magnolia was one of the first flowering plants. In flowers that are evolutionarily younger, there are structures known as sepals underneath the flower’s petals. While the petals are white or brightly colored, sepals tend to be green. When it isn’t possible to differentiate between the sepals and the petals, then both structures are called tepals.

So back to the beetles. Magnolia flowers have some interesting behavior to aid in pollination. They will open during the day and attract beetles with a strong scent. As night falls, the flower closes, trapping any beetles that are resting there. Magnolia flowers are hermaphroditic, meaning the flowers have both male and female sex organs. Flowers close up at night and as the tepals raise, the female sex organs open to accept any pollen that the beetles may have carried in from a different flower. As morning approaches and the plant senses that it’s getting lighter, the female parts will close and the male parts open to deposit pollen on the beetle. Then the flowers open and release the little prisoner, who will hopefully fly to another flower and pollinate it.

Magnolias are native to both East and Southeast Asia and North and Central America and have a long history of both medicinal and culinary use. As far back as at least two-thousand years ago, the Chinese were using magnolia to treat anxiety, depression, insomnia, asthma, seizures, allergies, and chest colds. These uses are also supported in Japan, and on the opposite side of the world in Mexico and by several indigenous peoples. Magnolia’s neuroprotective effects have been studied by scientists and seem to validate these uses, but more studies are needed to determine the best use for this plant.

Magnolia buds and tepals are said to have a spicy, sweet flavor reminiscent of ginger and cardamom and they are used in a wide variety of ways. They can be baked, fried, added to salads, pickled, used to flavor sugars, made into cordials… pretty much anything you can think of. You can also chew on the bark to help relive the symptoms of withdrawal from things like cigarettes and sugar.

Having such a long history, it’s no surprise that magnolia are found in folklore and myth all over the world. In Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics by Richard Folkard Jr. (1884), the author, perhaps conflating the plant’s use as a sleeping aid, says that the scent is so strong that one flower placed in the bedroom at night is enough to kill a person. It isn’t, but I love to include these silly bits of folklore, especially when I can find other folklore that directly contradicts it. As in Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs which states that one should put a magnolia flower on or near the bed to encourage your partner’s faithfulness. I suppose it’s difficult to step out on a lover when you’re dead?

In one Japanese folktale I found, a fox tricks a man into becoming a priest by placing a large magnolia leaf over its head, thereby turning itself into a woman. It then used duckweed to form a baby. The man had been watching this and threw a rock at the duckweed baby, killing it. When the (fox)woman broke down in hysterics, the man scoffed, telling her that he knew she was a fox. But she continued sobbing, mourning her baby with such intensity, that the man started to doubt that what he’d done was right. The (fox)woman, in culmination of an epic gaslighting session, convinced him to become a priest to atone for his crime. The woman took him to a temple where another priest shaved his head as part of his initiation. The shaving was intensely painful, brining the man to his senses. The priest disappeared, the temple disappeared, and the woman was gone. The man was bald, however, because the fox had chewed off his hair. I guess… don’t throw rocks at babies, even if they’re made of duckweed and their mother has a magnolia leaf on her head.

Also in Japan, certain miko, or Shinto shrine maidens, called Zatokaka, would use beads made of magnolia wood to heal sick babies.

They also used the bowl of water and dead leaf, plus a rosary called mokorenji -magnolia. If a child was born and was sick, it was placed under the protection of a Zatokaka. A rosary bead from the miko’s rosary was attached to the child’s clothing and became the protector of the child.

-From a 1962 issue of the Journal Folklore Studies, written by William P. Fairchild

This certainly invokes the long-held belief in the healing power of the magnolia.

In an Indian folksong, a woman laments that her husband has brought a co-wife into the home. She says she could understand him doing this if she were ugly or barren or had a sharp tongue. Or:

If I had crippled arms, you could have brought a co-wife,

I have arms like the branches of magnolia, why have you brought her?

From a 1985 issue of the Journal Asian Folklore Studies by Manju Bahtnagar

Here the magnolia is meant to evoke grace and beauty. And they certainly are as beautiful, and useful, as they are ancient. Co-wives (or husbands, I don’t know your life) I feel like should be a joint decision, though…

And that’s the magnolia, ancient, lovely, and useful.

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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Native to Japan, China, and Korea, Pittosporum tobira is also known as other things, but most weirdly, Japanese cheesewood, for which I could not find an explanation, but I do have a theory, though more about that later. Its scientific name Pittosporum comes from the Greek pitta meaning ‘pitch’ and sporos meaning ‘seed’ because its seeds are covered in a sticky resin. The seeds are a favorite of birds and it’s likely that the resin helps with distribution. In fact these plants are considered invasive in many places because they escape cultivation so easily.

The second part of its name, tobira comes from the Japanese tobira no ki which means ’door tree’. Here we’ll take a quick detour to Japan to help explain this curious name. Every year in early February the Japanese celebrate Setsubun, which literally means ‘seasonal division’ and celebrates the day before the first day of spring on the Japanese calendar. During this time the spirit world is thought to be very close to the physical world. Rituals are performed to drive out evil spirits or any bad fortune that is hanging around from the previous year. Some rituals include mamemaki or ‘bean scattering’ in which roasted soybeans are thrown out the door or at a family member wearing an oni mask while shouting “Devils out! Fortune in!” Sounds fun idk... also I’ve never had roasted soybeans but they sound delicious.

Another custom is hanging roasted sardine heads with either Pittosporum tobira, because it apparently stinks when cut which will drive away bad spirits, or holly, which will frighten bad spirits away with its thorns, over your door, hence the name ‘door tree.’

So this bad smell, I should note that P. tobira only stinks when cut, presumably to discourage predation. Although it is still eaten by the sika deer. I have one of these trees out behind my apartment and two inside and a suspicion that the smell might be what puts the cheese in cheesewood :( but I can’t cut a tree for something so silly. So I’m going to pretend that P. tobira smells like Roqueofort and sika deer like cheese.

Now, cheese-scented wood aside, another of P. tobira’s common names is the mock orange because its creamy white blossoms smell similar to orange blossoms. This I can confirm, they smell incredible in the spring.

Possibly because it’s inedible and smells bad when cut, I couldn’t find any folk medicine uses for this plant, but in science Pittosporum tobira has been shown to protect against glutamate-induced neurotoxicity, which is when the neurotransmitter glutamate overstimulates neurons and causes cell death, which in turn can lead to neurodegenerative diseases. It has also shown antibacterial activity, cytoprotective properties against various forms of cancer, and antioxidant properties. A 2019 study published in The Florida Entomologist stated that the mosquito Aedes albopictus laid fewer eggs on Pittosporum tobira than on other plants in the study.

The top 5 plant species that resulted in the most egg production were as fol-lows: A. grandiflora, L. chinense, V. odoratissimum, E. japonicas, and P. fraseri. Mosquitoes exposed to P. fortuneana, P. tobira, and L. quihoui produced significantly fewer eggs per female than mosquitoes from other groups.

Aedes albopictus aka the tiger mosquito, is a known vector for yellow fever, dengue fever, Chikungunya fever, and usutu virus in humans. Also, it’s a vector for heartworm in dogs and cats. Fewer of these monsters is definitely a good thing, I say plant more P. tobira.

These plants are often propagated from cuttings, but they’re also really easy to grow from seed. I have two that I grew from seeds from the tree behind my building. The seeds were really sticky when I found the open pod on the ground, but I just popped them in the dirt that way and put the pots under a grow light. They grow pretty quickly, look cool, and take a fair amount of neglect. Probably two of my favorite plants.

The tree I grew them from, as you can see (ok I forgot to take a picture), is variegated. I’ve been watching and it looks like new growth stays dark green for a while before it develops variegation, so it’ll be interesting to see if that happens to my baby plants or if they’ll just stay green. I’m happy either way, I love these guys. Mature trees bloom in early spring, so watch for seeds at the end of summer if you have one around you and want to grow your own. They are pretty popular landscape plants in the warmer parts of the world, so you just might.

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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Thuja is a genus of conifer in the cypress family that only has five extant species, but a couple of them are pretty interesting, so I thought we’d check them out this month. Confers hit the plant scene during the triassic (250-200 million years ago), but the earliest Thuja fossil we have, T. polaris, doesn’t show up until the Paleocene (66-56 million years ago). But that’s just conifers, the earliest plants are probably around 700 million years old. Just a periodic reminder that plants have been here much, much longer than us. The earliest hominids date back to approximately 4.5 million years ago, and modern humans have only been around for about 300,000 years. Respect your elders is all I’m saying. Life on Earth would not be sustainable without them…. But they could, also, theoretically, one day start producing a little too much oxygen and we’d all die. Or slightly less oxygen… and we’d all die. Respect.

The two most salient species of Thuja are T. occidenatlis and T. plicata, the northern white cedar and western redcedar, respectively. Neither are cedars, but plant names are wily, you kind of have to accept it. Both trees are also known as arborvitae, or tree of life. White-cedar is native to the northeast coast of the US and redcedar is native to the Pacific Northwest.

We’ll start with redcedar, it’s a much bigger species, reaching heights of 230 feet. So big, in fact that it is used by The First Nations of the Pacific Northwest to make totem poles. Redcedar is known as the Tree of Life because it is used to furnish so many other aspects of indigenous life, everything from bowls and utensils, to baskets, houses, canoes, to ceremonial objects. Redcedar bark is used for clothing, mats, rope, and other soft items. Bark is only harvested from a tree once as stripping too much bark will kill it. According to The Gymnosperm Database, before Europeans came to the Americas, the trees were never cut down, only trees that fell on their own, or planks cut from living trees were used. Archeological evidence suggests that redcedar has been in use by indigenous people for at least 8000 years. (For anyone counting, that’s WAY before white people came to North America… in fact, if you really want to get technical, there are fossilized footprints of indigenous people in White Sands, Arizona that have been dated to around 21,000 and 23,000 years ago… again, way before the white people)

A Coast Salish story says that Great Spirit created the redcedar to honor the spirit of a man who always helped his neighbors, “When he dies and where he is buried, a cedar tree will grow and be useful to the people -- the roots for baskets, the bark for clothing, the wood for shelter.” Really digging this whole vibe.

On the other side of the country we have Thuja occidentalis, or Northern White-Cedar, or Nookomis Giizhik in Ojibwe, which means Grandmother Cedar. As you might imagine, this tree is treated with care and respect by not only the Anishinaabe, but by other indigenous people in the North East as well. White-cedar is used less for building and crafting, and more for medicinal purposes. Its leaves are high in vitamin C, which is how it became known as arborvitae. In 1536 French explorer Jacques Cartier learned from the Iroquois that it could be used to treat scurvy. Scurvy is, of course, a vitamin C deficiency that once plagued sailors unable to take fresh fruit on long sea voyages. Early symptoms of scurvy are fatigue and soreness, but as it progresses bleeding, gum-disease, inability to heal wounds, personality changes, and death can occur. You can actually make a tea out of the leaves, but I have to warn you, the leaves contain Thujone, which is also found in wormwood and is what allegedly made Absinthe cause insanity. Thujone is a toxin and can kill you. Pregnant women should definitely not drink white-cedar tea and everyone else should drink in moderation. That said, Thuja is also commonly found in scent oils and hair oils, and yes, there is Thuja Gin.

One of the oldest white-cedar trees is called the Manidoo-giizhikens, or Little Spirit Cedar Tree, and grows on the shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. The tree is sacred to the Ojibwe First Nations who frequently leave it offerings of tobacco in return for safe travels on the lake. The tree is also known as the Witch Tree and I tracked down the origin story of that name… it’s not great. In 1922 artist Dewey Albinson painted the tree and then had this completely disrespectful and false thing to say about it:

“incredible that this wind-twisted old cedar can have braved the elements for perhaps four hundred years. In the old days, the Indians would portage across the point back to a gully to avoid passing the tree and the Evil Spirit that lives in it and dared only approach in large groups, drumming and singing, and bearing gifts of tobacco to appease the Evil Spirit.”

Yeah, while I love a witch tree, this one ain’t it. The Ojibwe revere cedar trees, this one especially. In fact the tree is off limits to sightseers and can only be visited with an Ojibwe guide. It’s odd/disturbing how readily white Americans will monsterfy things sacred to Indigenous People isn’t it? Kind of a horror pet peeve of mine…. Like make up your own stories you unimaginative shmucks.

Anyway.

I’m going to leave you with a painting of the tree by Ojibwe artist George Morrison and this soothing video about weaving cedar mats by Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians Tribal Historic Preservation Office.

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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Most places you look up this cactus family will tell you that their name, Pilosocereus, means hairy cereus. Such lazy writing. What’s a cereus? Just takes a quick Google Translate of the Latin to find out it’s a candle. So we have a hairy candle cactus. See that’s super helpf- hold on what? A hairy candle cactus?

IDK, this is what I pictured… A green candle with saguaro-type arms and ginger armpit hair. One of these days I’m gonna learn how to draw…

But actually it’s more like this:

Pilosocereus leucocephalus (pictured above) is the species type and thus exemplifies this genus. A tall, pillar cactus that, yeah, does grow hair. The hair is actually clusters of modified spines that grow in either soft clumps or in a kind of webbing around the cactus. So why do they grow hair? Are they going to grow feet and lungs and voice boxes in some distant evolutionary nightmare?

I’m no expert, but I’m going with no. Then again, plants do some surprising things… Pilosocereus are found from Central to northern South America and tend to grow in environments where temperatures can fluctuate wildly between scorching days and freezing nights and rainfall can be naught but a once in a year deluge, hair can help them cope with these extreme conditions. Lush cactus locks can protect tender flesh from sunburn, light frost, and can catch and conserve moisture from dew. Some cacti grow hair around flowers or new growth to protect young buds from the sun, these growths are called cephalium.

So what else has Pilosocereus got for us? It’s not a huge genus but there are a few notables among the bunch.

Pilosocereus pachycladus: Used as food and medicine in Brazil, namely to treat urinary infections and prostate enlargement.

Pilosocereus gounellei: It’s fruit is high in magnesium, iron, zinc, potassium, manganese, and sodium.

Pilosocereus leucocephalus: Is a keystone species in Central America, where it is abundant and supports several other species by providing food and habitat.

There are some stunners, too. Like Pilosocereus magnificus and Pilosocereus fulvilanatus.

Plus the kind of weird Pilosocereus machrisii.

There’s even the tragic Pilosocereus millspaughii, which earned the unfortunate distinction of being the first plant known to become extinct due to sea level rise in the United States in 2024. The cactus still exists in botanical collections, but now grows nowhere in the wild.

But maybe my favorite thing about this group of cacti is that they’re chiropterophilous, that is, they’re bat lovers. Species in the genus Pilosocereus can be pollinated by a number of animals, but are largely pollinated by bats and moths and have night blooming flowers that tend to be light in color and smell like garlic, or other pungent odors to attract these nocturnal feeders.

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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Lonicera, or honeysuckle, is native to North America, North Africa, and Eurasia. While there are about 158 species, the two that showed up most often in my research were Lonicera japonica and Lonicera pericyclemenum, so I’m going to focus on those two.

Before we get into this, let’s talk general toxicity. Honeysuckles are wily. Some species are completely toxic, some are only partially toxic (as in, leaves and berries but not flowers), some aren’t toxic at all. SO, if you’re going out foraging, be very careful with these plants. Lonicera japonica is currently only used for its flowers and nectar as far as I could tell, so I wouldn’t attempt to eat any other part of it. Lonicera periclymenum is said to be entirely mildly toxic, but I also found recipes for pudding using its flowers. There is one variety I could find that definitely has edible berries, Lonicerum caerulea. These berries have been studied by scientists and are actually very good for you. It seems the rest of the lot have toxic berries, though. Fortunately, the nectar of all species is safe to eat, so you’ll always be able to suck that honey.

Lonicera japonica, or Japanese honeysuckle is native to East Asia and parts of China, where it has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over a thousand years. Currently it is farmed for its flowers which are used to make everything from tea and wine, to pills, powders, and even injections. Here’s a deep dive if you’re interested in how it’s harvested, prepared, and used. Primarily it’s used as a cure for upper respiratory infections. This is use is backed up by science, L. japonica has antiseptic, antibacterial, and antioxidant properties, among a host of other good stuff.

Honeysuckle is also mentioned frequently in the Bencao gangmu (I also saw it written Ben cao gang mu). Written by Li Shizhen and first published in 1596, the multiple volume work includes medical knowledge, herbology, and natural history. Honeysuckle is mentioned in volumes III, IV, and V in recipes along with other plants to help cure everything from achy legs and skin boils or lesions, to several ailments involving qi, particularly illnesses of wind. I’m not going to try and explain wind, qi is very nuanced and I’ll mostly likely mess it up. But, I did find an in-depth explanation here, if you’re interested.

I actually have one of these right outside my front door. I purloined a cutting from a hedge I came across on a walk with my dog Wednesday (RIP sweet girlie) a few years ago. It hasn’t flowered yet, but I’m crossing my fingers for this spring. An important thing to keep in mind if you live in the US is that L. japonica is considered a noxious invasive. I have mine in a container so it can’t spread vegetatively, and I plan to harvest the flowers when it finally blooms, so it can’t spread via seed either.

OK, so let’s get on to L. periclymenum, or European honeysuckle. This one is much more folklore heavy. The lore here is pretty interesting, and much of what I found came from the UK. Planted outside, honeysuckle, also called woodbine, brings luck, protection, money, and increases psychic powers. Bring its flowers inside, though, and you’re apparently asking for bad luck. This might have to do with its supposed ability to grant erotic dreams to young women and of course, in times long gone (cough cough) women’s sexuality was all but taboo. It could be that the erotic dreams of young women were equated somewhere along the way with bad luck, but I couldn’t find anything suggesting that. So who knows… Honeysuckle was also known as both witch-snare and witch-scape because you could either catch a witch in a hoop made of it, or she could use its vines to escape if she was being chased.

According to Richard Folkard Jr.’s Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics (1884), in France honeysuckle was frequently planted in graveyards. He quotes the French journalist and novelist, Alphonse Carr as saying:

There is a perfume more exciting, more religious, even than that of incense; it is that of the Honeysuckles which grow over tombs upon which Grass has sprung up thick and tufted with them, as quickly as forgetfulness has taken possession of the hearts of the survivors.

So goth, I might have to check out some of Carr’s novels… Interestingly, he was an avid floriculturist and was the man who gave the dahlia its name.

L. periclymenum was also known as goat’s leaf because it twines and grows in high places where only goats fear not tread, or because goats like to eat it, possibly a little of both. Also, it’s a well known habitat for dormice, which are such sleepy cuties I can’t even.

So there you have it. Plant it for its delicious nectar, but choose a native! Don’t be like me and thieve an invasive just because it’s pretty and no one is looking.

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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The lusty pomegranate, packed with its juicy, blood red arils, has a very long history. Probably originating from the area between Iran to northern India and cultivated from around 2000 BCE, the pomegranate features in traditional medicine, cuisine, and in religion and myth. Pomegranates are, botanically speaking, berries. Each berry is packed with seeds and each seed is encased in juicy flesh called an aril.

I have to confess, the etymology of Punica granatum sent me down an infuriating rabbit hole, but more about that in a bit. For now, I’d like to enumerate all the reasons pomegranates are not like grenades. Stick with me for a bit, I promise this will all make sense.

Let’s start with science, because here, pomegranates pack a punch. Scientists have analyzed the flowers, peels, arils, and the seeds and found that pomegranates have antiviral, antibacterial, anticancer, anti-diabetic, antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-fungal, and anti-obesity properties and can help boost liver and reproductive health.

Many of the traditional medicinal uses I came across had to do with fluxes. In ye olden times fluxes were anything that leaked out of your body when you didn’t want it too. Think blood, bile, phlegm, pus, and other fun stuff we don’t need to mention. Different parts of pomegranates were used to stop the flow of different fluxes. Pomegranates are rich in tannins which essentially tighten bodily tissues. You can feel it when you eat the seeds, they’re very juicy, but your mouth still feels a little dry and puckery after you eat them. That’s tannins tightening up your mouth skin. It’s possible the various poultices, baths, and tinctures prescribed for fluxes could have worked by tightening up whatever happened to be leaking.

Pomegranates also contain antioxidants, minerals like calcium and magnesium, protein, vitamins like C and E, and a lot more stuff with complicated chemical names that would definitely be too boring to list but are still really cool. There’s a reason pomegranates have earned the “superfood” label.

In addition to being superfoods, pomegranates throughout history have been super holy as well. From the Assyrians to the Iranians, Zoroastrians, Palestinians, to ancient Greeks, Egypt, China, India, Armenia, and in the Abrahamic traditions the pomegranate is a symbol of fecundity, prosperity, and connection to the divine. The fruit is associated with Aphrodite and Hera and hence love and childbirth. Through Persephone and her fateful eating of a pomegranate seed in the Underworld, the pomegranate became associated with the resurrection of Christ and the cycles of life more broadly. In the Jewish tradition, the pomegranate is said to contain as many seeds as there are teachings of God. In Egypt they were frequently associated with immortality. In India pomegranates were lauded for their ability to increase vitality and spirituality. And the list goes on. I could tell you stories for days, seriously.

Pomegranates are an incredibly important food, both historically and in the present, and they have consistently been associated with life, spirituality, and abundance. It is here, though, that we’ve come to grenades. How did we get here? Because an old French word for the pomegranate is pomme-grenade and I can’t let things go. The word “grenade” dates from the late 1500s. See this quote below from 1656 explaining the correlation between pomegranates and grenades.

Granato (Span.) a Pomegranate, an Apple filled with delicious grains ; there is also a warlike Engin that being filled with Gunpowder and other materials is wont to be shot out of a wide mouthed peece of Ordnance, and is called a Granado, for the likeness it hath with the other Granado in fashion, and being fully stuffed as the other Granado is, though the materials are very different. [Blount’s “Glossographia,” 1656]

Pomegranate and grenade
Stuffed with different materials indeed
One with seed, and one with anti-seed

Imagine a bride and groom entering their home after the wedding. Maybe they’re alone, maybe they have a happy crowd of friends and family cheering them on. The bride holds up a ripe, heavy, red pomegranate and hurls it against the floor (or the wall in some traditions). The fruit splits apart. The happy couple, or maybe their guests, laughing and expectant, rush to gather up any seeds that have scattered as the fruit broke. The number of seeds that escaped the fruit equals the number of children the new couple should expect to have. Maybe it’s here that the family departs, leaving the happy couple with well wishes and knowing smiles to start a family of their own.

Or maybe it was a grenade crashing through the window. Its shrapnel, loosed from its cold grey shell, will ensure no one in that room ever bares a child.

I suppose for a fruit so prevalent in folklore and mythology I shouldn’t be surprised that this correlation with grenades was made, but I still hate it. Conflating something so spiritually important throughout time with something as base as ordnance is disquieting, if unsurprising. I don’t have any grand or earth shattering insights. I’m just… tired of war.

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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So coffee need tired

Native to Brazil but common throughout South America this vampire bait is also known as Herbst’s bloodleaf, the beefsteak plant, chicken gizzard, and cimora señorita (more on this one later). Not gonna lie, I don’t know what a chicken gizzard looks like, but I guess not the gooey gelatinous pink of supermarket chicken? (I’m vegetarian, all meat looks vaguely menacing)

I didn’t come up with a wealth of information on this plant, but what I did find is really interesting and is going to take us back in time to the Moche civilization before we jump back into modern day. Moche (or I saw Mochica in older sources) lived in northern Peru from about 100 CE (using CE, aka Common Era, since I didn’t get raptured and I’m bitter) to 800 CE. They were an agricultural people who built extensive and sophisticated irrigation systems to divert water from rivers to their crops. While they did not develop written language their pottery is among the most varied in the world with a wide range of sizes, shapes, and themes. Moche ceramics were made using mold technology and then painted with scenes that depicted important social themes like agriculture, war, metalwork, weaving, shamanism, and erotica. It’s completely irrelevant to this post, but much of their pottery was very very sexy and depicted everything from oral sex, to gay sex, to this skeleton masturbating.

ANYWAY, what we’re really interested in is the shamanism. According to a paper by Marlene Dobkin De Rio, Moche shamans used different concoctions of hallucinogens to for divination and other ritual purposes. While the infamous, mescal-producing, San Pedro cactus is frequently pictured on pottery, it’s likely that Iresine herbstii was used in conjunction with it.

Some of the best evidence for this are actually modern day Peru’s curanderos. These healers still make frequent use of San Pedro for ritual purposes. Called cimora, the San Pedro concoction is used for divination, diagnosing, healing, and protection, among other things. I’m vastly simplifying here as the curandero(a)/brujo(a) role in Peruvian society is really important and complex, but a curandero will drink cimora and the subsequent visions received will lead them to a diagnosis and cure for their client. If you’re interested in a more in-depth look at specifically the botany aspect, I read V. De Feo’s paper here.

Cimora isn’t typically only comprised of San Pedro, though, curanderos will mix other plants in with it to achieve specific effects. These are often other hallucinogens and it is important to note that the role of curandero is inherited so a lot of experience and training goes into deciding things like mixtures and dosages. Different plants serve different healing functions within the curanderos’ formulary and Iresine herbstii, aka cimora señorita, is one of the plants used in black magic. I couldn’t find any additional information, but cimora señorita is a class of plants that, according to De Feo, are used to “promote ‘suchaduras’, they suck the vital spirit from the enemy, causing psychological and physical disorder until death occurs.” Soo very vampiric. What’s not to love?

There is some science to corroborate the use of Iresine herbstii as a psychedelic. According to a few different studies it binds to the 5-HT receptor, a seratonin receptor, and to D1, a dopamine receptor. Essentially, señorita gonna make you feel good. Maybe like you’ve got your enemy’s life force surging through you? Maybe. Anyway. I have no idea how it’s prepared or which part of the plant is used or what dosage might be safe, how it’s ingested… what I’m saying is before you raid your neighbor’s yard (because yeah this is definitely also sold as a landscape plant), well maybe don’t.

If you want a safer, less possibly brain-destroying vampire use for chicken gizzard, it is also very commonly used to treat skin conditions like eczema.

Ok I guess we ended on a much less sexy note than we started. I just go where the plants take me….

Hey there! Here’s how plant horror in the coven works:

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone.

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, horror piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - New episodes are free! The back catalogue is going to remain paywalled largely because un-paywalling it is time consuming and I am busy doing horrifying things.

Third week of the month - The Grim Grimoire (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). The text version of this will be free, but a digital zine version will go out to paid subscribers. The back catalogue will remain paywalled for the reason stated above.

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, monster trucks, extinct species, serial killers, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Share

Please send coffee🫩

The Corokia species are native and endemic to New Zealand and they are known for their odd way of growing. These shrubby plants have zig-zagging, interlacing branches with tiny leaves that grow mostly on the inside of the shrub. It’s called divarication and it’s weirdly common in New Zealand’s plants. As in, not just Corokia grow this way. There are a couple of theories as to why this happens in New Zealand, but we’ll get to that in a second.

This is a total wish list plant for me. I don’t have one, but I want one, they’re so weird. But they’re not just a curiosity, they’re important in New Zealand, too. Ecologically the plant’s dense growth habit makes it good habitat for insects and small mammals. Its berries are also edible and are favored by two of the island’s bird species, the tūī and kererū. While the berries are safe for humans to eat, they are purportedly not yummy.

Medicinally, the Māori use the leaves in a tea that is said to instantly cure stomach issues. I found this reported in a couple of places from different sources, so it’s possible there is something to it. Corokia bark contains beta-sitosterol, a phytosterol that WebMD says is probably good for reducing cholesterol and also reducing an enlarged prostate. And it might be good for reducing your risk of heart disease. There doesn’t appear to be any solid science on this yet.

Speaking of the Māori, I came across something interesting regarding Corokia. You’ll need a little background information for this and I’m going to do my best with it. In Māori culture everything is either tapu or noa. Tapu is where we get the English word taboo and it denotes something sacred and not to be trifled with. Noa are everyday, ordinary things. According to several sites the leaves of Corokia (korokio in Māori) can be used in a ritual to remove the tapu from food. But, this is a little confusing because according to Māori mythology and a few corroborating sources, all food is noa. Here’s why, and I’m going to mostly use the English translations for the Māori names. During creation the Sky Father and Earth Mother were torn apart by their children, who were quarrelsome. One child, Tāwhirimātea, attacked his brothers (the gods of sea, forest, cultivated, and uncultivated foods) and ate them. The act of eating them removed their tapu, their sacredness, thus making them, and all food by extension, noa, or ordinary.

So I spent a lot of time looking for the source of the story that Corokia leaves were used to take the tapu from food, but I couldn’t get to it. I’d love to know if this is true or not, though. Any Māori readers out there?

The Māori also used Corokia’s zig-zagged wood to make fishhooks and some kind of knife to treat wounds, I couldn’t find any clarification on that one. The way it’s described almost makes it seem like they used it as a needle to stitch wounds, but honestly that’s just me speculating.

And that brings us back to that strange growing habit of the Corokia, divarication. As I said above it’s pretty common in plants from New Zealand. Here’s a picture of a Sophora prostrata, a member of the pea family showing the same odd zig-zagged tangle of branches as Corokia.

In fact 10% of New Zealand’s plants zig-zag like this. The question is why? What is it about New Zealand that causes plants to behave this way? Well there are basically two theories.

One is that it has to do with the moa, New Zealand’s now extinct, giant flightless bird. The moa stood around ten feet tall, which is about as tall as the tallest ostriches get today. Bird grazers aren’t really bothered by thorns or prickers the way a mammalian grazer would be, so the theory is that growing a net of flexible branches over their tiny and barely worth eating leaves helped the plants avoid moa predation.

But not all scientists were buying that one. Others hypothesized that the change in growth habit occurred when New Zealand’s climate changed from tropical to a colder, drier climate during the Pleistocene. They argue that by shrinking leaf size and bringing them within the protection of the branches the plants would lose less water and be more protected against temperature extremes.

The climate change theory gained popularity until a 2007 study in Madagascar found that plants there also have a strong tendency to divaricate. So what does Madagascar have in common with New Zealand? Yep, extinct, giant flightless birds, the elephant birds to be exact.

For now the prevailing theory is… well, why not both? There’s no scientific law against an adaptation being selected for because of more than one environmental stressor. So pile ‘em on!

Regardless of the reason, this curious zig-zag tendency makes for some interesting and unique plants and gave me an excuse to mix a bunch of birds into the post today.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Subscribe now

Share

Ko-Fi cuz I need coffee!

We’ve got a twofer at the lab today, Pteris, or brake ferns, and Pteridium, or bracken ferns. As you can imagine, they’re easily confused in the sources. Scientifically, I’ll handle them separately, but when we get to the folklore, well… trying to suss out which folklore belonged to which fern looked to be a little Sisyphean, so I gave up in an effort to safeguard what little is left of my sanity these days.

Pteris, AKA the Brake Ferns

Various species of brake ferns are native to Australia, New Zealand, Southern Africa, Japan, and North America. Brake is possibly a Middle English term for fern, but that etymology is not totally clear. What is clear, is that these are pretty cool ferns with several scientifically important species.

Pteris multifida (the spider brake fern) and Pteris vittata (the ladder brake fern) are both popular commercially, but are also what scientists call hyperaccumulators. What this means is that they are capable of sucking heavy metals up out of the soil and storing the toxins in their leaves, making them great for planting in polluted areas. One of the toxins they’re best at hyperaccumulating is arsenic… just in case you ever need to know that for any reason. Aaany reason at all…

Another brake fern, Pteris cretica (the cretan brake fern), is used by scientists as a bioindicator. These are species that are particularly sensitive to pollutants. If they are abundant and healthy, scientists know the habitat is doing well. When the ferns begin to die off, we know something in the ecosystem has changed and is upsetting its delicate balance. Frogs are another well known bioindicator.

I haven’t mentioned in a while that plants are amazing chemical factories. It’s probably my favorite thing about them. Pteris ferns produce a couple of pretty cool chemicals. First are pterosin A and pterosin B. The A variant is an anti-diabetic, significantly reducing insulin resistance and the B variant looks like it could help thicken joint cartilage in people with osteoarthritis. The second is Astragalin which has been targeted for a number of possible uses including fighting some types of cancer, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, ulcerative colitis, mastitis, obesity, diabetes mellitus, diabetic complications, blood flow injuries, neuropathy, respiratory diseases, and reproductive system diseases.

Pteridium AKA the Bracken Ferns

These guys are a little less friendly, but no less interesting. To begin with, they’re ancient, bracken fern fossils have been found dating back to the Eocene, that’s about 55 million years ago. Pteridium aquilinum aka common bracken is what botanists call cosmopolitan, meaning it’s found pretty much everywhere. Other pteridium ferns are found in Central and South America, China, New Zealand, South East Asia, and Australia.

Brackens also produce chemicals, but these are little less helpful, to say the least. The first is Ptaquiloside, a known carcinogen. Fortunately it’s readily soluble in water, which means that as long as the fern is soaked or boiled, it’s still edible. And it is, in fact, eaten all over the world.

Plants typically produce chemicals to use in defense, and bracken do not slack in this area. These ferns are allelopathic, which means they pump chemicals into the soils that kill other plants around them. Great for the ferns, but they can outcompete other plants to the point of throwing ecosystems off balance and becoming invasive.

Another way bracken ferns protect themselves is by producing hydrogen cyanide when they are eaten by mammals and insects. As you might imagine, hydrogen cyanide is not great for, well, anyone. Additionally, bracken produces two hormones that trigger moulting in insects: alpha ecdysone and 20-hydroxyecdysone. Ingesting these hormones causes insects to moult uncontrollably. This means that they grow and shed new exoskeletons in quick succession. Sort of gruesome if you think about it…. Just growing and shedding new skin over and over until you die of exhaustion. Yikes.

Whew, this is getting long and we still haven’t talked about the folklore…

So here we go. Now, I’m fairly sure that most of this folklore refers to Pteridium aquilinum, but most sources call it Pteris aquilinum so… it’s a little confusing, hence the combo episode.

My absolute favorite folklore about these ferns involves their seeds and flowers. Yeah, ferns don’t have those, that’s kind of why I love it. Before people understood that ferns reproduce via spores, more like mosses do, they assumed that ferns were just, I guess sneaky about flowering. Legends said that one could only spot a fern flowering and producing seed at midnight on Midsummer’s Eve (or St. John’s Eve which appears to be about the same date). The seed could grant wishes, help one find treasure, cause invisibility, be used to summon fairies, or keep your lover faithful. In Flowers and Flower Lore Rev. Hilderic Friend says that elves are at their most powerful on the Eve of St. John’s and that is why ferns flower on that particular night. Overflow power I guess.

Burning ferns is also mentioned frequently in sources. If burned indoors, fern smoke will cast out devils. It is also said that witches hate bracken ferns and their flowers that don’t exist, so burning will smoke out witches as well. If burned outside, called “firing the bracken” in some places, bracken smoke is said to bring rain.

Now, the reason witches hate ferns so much brings me to the last curiosity of this journey, cutting a fern stem or root. My suspicion is that this started with a divinatory practice in which a young woman cut the stem of a fern, a letter could then be seen on the cut surface that corresponded to the first initial of her future husband. It’s kind of scattershot from there. You can cut the stem or the root, either vertically or horizontally and find: the letter C for Christ (this is why witches hate the fern), the Greek letter X (also for Christ), Adam and Eve standing on either side of the tree of knowledge, a spread eagle, a double eagle, an eagle wing, an oak, King Charles hiding in the oak (this is a WHOLE story), or the footprint of the devil (which witches also hate… I’m not sure why).

I’m going to leave you with this odd little poem I found. Not at all sure what it’s about, maybe some kind of harvest cycle thing…

When the Fern is as high as a spoon,
You may sleep an hour at noon;
When the Fern is as high as a ladle,
You may sleep as long as you’re able;
When the Fern begins to look red,
Then milk is good with brown bread.

Yeah, I don’t know.

So that’s it! This research will show up throughout the month in some twisted plant horror. Check the schedule out below👻

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Subscribe now

Share

Buy me a coffee!

Got a little lost in the research on this one. It turns out that the maidenhair fern has got quite a history. It was first named by the Roman naturalist, Pliny, who called it adiantum, meaning wetless, because he noticed that water tends to bead up and slide right off the plant’s leaves. Pliny saw this as a strange contradiction to the plant’s love of moist environments, but nowadays botanists call this the ‘lotus effect.’ Some plants, most notably lotus of course, produce a water resistant coating to help keep their leaves free of pathogens and dirt. As the water slides off the leaves, it takes dirt with it, pretty clever really. The rest of its name, capillus-veneris means Venus’ hair and was given to the plant by the OG taxonomist, Linneas.

The association with Venus seems to appear during medieval times, but I couldn’t find an explanation for such a pairing. In later, 19th century and early 20th century sources a story arises that the plant’s hydrophobic properties made it just like Venus, emerging from the sea, with her hair perfect. The Victorians did love a good tale. Pliny did note that some referred to the plant as ‘beautiful hair’ or ‘thick hair’ and that it was used as a hair dye, but he never correlates the maidenhair with Venus.

It is obviously the thin, black, shining stalk that gives

to the adiantum its name of maiden hair, for the Greek

adiantos signifies dry, and refers to the hair of Venus,

which was not bedraggled when she arose from the sea…

-Charles M. Skinner, 1911

Skinner, in his Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and Plants In All Ages and In All Climes also links maidenhair fern to Hades and Persephone, although, I only found that in one other source (and again, with no explanation) and I have no idea what that connection is. I’d love to know, hopefully with a little more digging I can find the story.

The association with hair led to many, many recipes for tonics and shampoos to grow or thicken hair. This use of maidenhair fern to regrow hair arose all over the world, from Brazil to China people started using it as a hair tonic. And as it turns out, science has confirmed the plant’s ability to promote hair growth, and also to cure dandruff. So perhaps things happened the other way around and the plant became associated with hair because it actually is beneficial to hair.

Like last month’s plant, Polyscias fruticosa, maidenhair fern is also an over achiever. Historically it has been used as a diuretic, an expectorant, to help with general chest and throat ailments, to help regulate menstrual cycles, to help stimulate appetite, and to help pass kidney stones, all of which have been backed up by modern science.

In the fifteen hundreds pharmacists created a syrup with fronds of maidenhair that was used until the mid eighteen hundreds to treat symptoms of catarrh. Combined with licorice root, water, and sugar, the syrup was called serapium adiantinum or syrupus capillorum veneris. Licorice root was eventually replaced with orange flower water and the syrup changed from being primarily medicinal to moonlighting as a culinary delight called capillare that was added to teas and alcoholic drinks. I stumbled across a recipe in a book called The Drunkin Botanist by Amy Stewart (a book I somehow do not own).

Capillaire Syrup

Yield: 3 cups

Ingredients:

Several stems of fresh maidenhair ferns

2 cups of water

1 ounce orange flower water

1 ½ cups sugar

And of course, we have to talk about witches. In Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics by Richard Folkard, maidenhair is mentioned among a long list of plants used by witches in general, but also favored by perhaps three of the most famous classical witches, Hecate, Circe, and Medea. He also states that in Tyrol, a region in the Alps, anyone who binds rue, broom, maidenhair, agrimony, and ground ivy and carries the bundle around will be able to spot witches. I’m assuming broom refers to broom corn (Sorghum bicolor). Finally, Cunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs has this to say:

Immerse some maidenhair in water and then remove. If worn on the person or kept in the bedroom after this process it will grant you grace, beauty and love.

A lovely note to end on, for a plant that surprised me with a wealth of good research.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious. And don’t forget, subscriptions are only $2.50/month for life, but only for a limited time!

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Subscribe now

Share

Commonly known as the Ming aralia, Polyscias fruticosa is native to New Guinea, Australia, and India. Polyscias comes from a combination of Greek words meaning many shaded as some of the Polyscias species have broad, shade-giving leaves. Polyscias fruticosa is rare in the wild now, but is prevalent in landscaping in its native tropics where it is often used as a hedge shrub. It’s also a popular bonsai plant.

It’s a pretty useful hedge, too, since it is edible and yummy. Its young leaves and shoots are eaten both cooked and raw either in curries or solo with dips. It can also be found as an ingredient in tea. Every source says it tastes like parsley, but I’ve tried this one and I thought it tasted more like cumin? It looks a lot like parsley, so I don’t know. It’s good though. In Thailand it’s known as Garuda claws since its leaves tend to curl inward like the claws of the Hindu deity.

OK maybe off topic, but I love dropping a deity in when I can, Garuda is the half man, half bird mount of Vishnu. He’s mentioned in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain religions and is a popular symbol of strength, military prowess, and loyalty from Mongolia to the Philippines.

Polyscias fruticosa’s is also used for its spicy scent by Cambodia’s Buddhist monks to make ceremonial incense.

Aside from its use as a food, Polyscias fruticosa has been used in traditional medicine for centuries, and many of its uses are backed up by science. Dried leaves are powdered and mixed with salt as a healing salve. In India the plant is used as an astringent and used to reduce fevers. In Fiji the root is used as diuretic and the bark is juiced for mouth ulcers and syphilitic sores. In Cambodia, smoke is inhaled to induce sweating and the plant is also used for nerve and rheumatic pain. And finally, in Vietnam it is used to aid in digestion.

So what’s the science? It’s a bit of an over achiever. The plant has anticeptic, analgesic, fever reducing, and anticancer properties. In addition, it has been shown to improve cognition in rats, help fight bone diseases like osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis, and is toxic to disease carrying freshwater snails. But that’s not all, oh no, the plant is also a diuretic, antitussive, mucosuppressant, and could be useful in the fight against diabetes. Furthermore, while the plant is probably not safe for pregnant women (it causes miscarriages in lab rats), it is a useful lactation aid and can increase the quantity and quality of sperm. Oh and I almost forgot, it’s also an antiasthmatic.

Not bad for a common hedge plant.

I just got these two little guys. I’d been keeping an eye on Etsy for any Ming’s to come on sale and finally snagged these two for cheap… then the post office lost them. By the time I got them, all of their leaves were dead. They were just sticks in pots. But they were green sticks in pots and their roots were still holding fast, so I figured there was hope. I put them under grow lights and gave them some very diluted fertilizer… it took about two weeks before I saw any new leaves, but they’re getting there. Cute little revenants.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious. And don’t forget, subscriptions are only $2.50/month because everything is expensive and we’re all broke.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Subscribe now

Share

Commonly known as golden pothos (not a pothos), Epipremnum aureum is such a ubiquitous member of the houseplant trade, and has been for so many years, that botanists actually had some trouble tracing it back to its native home. But eventually they discovered that it originally came from Mo'orea in the Society Islands of French Polynesia. Nowdays the plant is naturalized all over the world and is considered invasive in many places.

These fast growing and easy to care for vines can easily take over your home as well, growing long trailing tendrils that plant owners can be loath to cut.

This tendency toward abundant growth lends the golden pothos two of its more common names, the money plant, and Devil’s ivy. With its gold-flecked leaves and fecund growth, it’s easy to see why it’s called a money plant, but Devil’s ivy might be a little less obvious. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any solid folklore behind the moniker. One site stated a legend that the demon, The Lord of Flies (aka Beelzebub), cursed the plant in the 1600s, but I couldn’t find this story anywhere else. Most sources pointed to the plant’s almost supernatural ability to thrive despite often being grown in low light and under neglectful conditions.

What is really incredible about Epipremnum aureum is that the form you keep in your home is the plant’s juvenile stage. Out in the wild they get huge, growing up to sixty-six feet in height with leaves as long a forty inches.

Indoors it’s highly unlikely your Epipremnum will ever get as big as a wild specimen, but knowing that it has that kind of potential is pretty cool.

As with most houseplants, the golden pothos won’t flower indoors, but what’s unusual about it is that it rarely flowers in the wild either. Described as a “shy flowering plant”, scientists have discovered that Epipremnum aureum has a genetic gibberellin deficiency. Gibberellin is a hormone responsible for growth, but also for flower, seed, and fruit development. When it does flower, or when flowering is artificially induced, it has an inflorescence typical of plants in the arum family with a spadix protected by a shield-like spathe.

Due to its prevalence around the world the golden pothos has been studied extensively and has a long list of potential uses in medicine. For example, it has been shown to have potential fighting both breast and liver cancer. Its leaves have antibacterial, anti-fungal, antioxidant, anti-diabetic, wound healing, and even anticorrosive properties (the study specifically states low-carbon steel). Even more, its stems have been shown to have gastroprotective abilities. And termites, termites hate it, do with that what you will. As I usually do, I’ll caution you not to go around eating this one. As with most plants in the Arum family it’s packed with calcium oxalates, little crystals that’ll tear you up and leave you with a swollen mouth. I wrote more about them in my Zamioculcus zamiifolia post.

There are quite a few varieties of Epipremnum aureum available on the plant market. I’ve got a Marble Queen and an Njoy. You can let them grow long, keep them trimmed, or let them climb a moss pole, whatever suits your space. Cut stems can be planted in dirt or can be rooted in water. I usually give the stems away when I trim them.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious. And don’t forget, subscriptions are only $2.50/month because everything is expensive and we’re all broke.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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The spider plant, everyone knows this one. Even without a green thumb you can keep this grassy-leaved hanging plant alive. Native to Southern Africa, they have thick tuberous roots that store water, so even if you forget to give it a drink every now and then, it’ll be ok. But what makes them famous are their trailing plantlets, little plant babies growing at the ends of long stems. In its natural environment the spider plant is a ground or cliff dweller and would grow similarly to a strawberry plant. They send their long trailing stems, called rhizomes, out into the surrounding soil and the plantlets growing on them root and grow and send out more rhizomes. Eventually you have a pretty big colony of related plants.

It’s easy to imagine that the Clorophytum comosum is called a spider plant because plantlets hanging off of their gracefully arched parent plant look like a brood of spiders chilling with their big mama. But I was surprised to learn that the plant’s common name has a completely different origin. According to The Laidback Gardener, there is a plant in Europe called Anthericum liliago that is similar in appearance to the spider plant, the emerald green version anyway. The variegated variety is more common in the plant trade, but naturally it tends to be a solid green, hence the chlorophytum moniker, which very creatively means green leaf.

Anthericum liliago was thought to be an antidote for spider bites and the plant is commonly called the spider plant in Mediterranean countries. (It is called St. Bernard’s lily in the US, but exploring that is beyond our current purview.) Clorophytum comosum was first described in 1794 by Carl Peter Thunberg and he called it Anthericum comosum assuming the two plants were related. A little while later both plants were moved into a genus called Phalangium. Phalangium is also a genus of arachnid commonly called harvestmen or daddy longlegs, depending on where you live. Curiously, the Phalangium are not even spiders, but are their own unique kind of arachnid. This is what we call a bit of a taxonomic cluster@#^&.

By 1862 the plants were correctly separated into their own respective genera, but the name spider plant adhered to both of them like so much spiderweb. For the record, lest we leave the Phalangium with a bad reputation, they don’t bite and are not dangerous. In fact, they feed on several garden pests, like aphids, leafhoppers, caterpillars, and mites. They are admittedly a little creepy with their very, very long legs and occasionally disturbing nesting behaviors (don’t click here if you’re nightmare prone). But ultimately they’re good garden helpers and harmless. I’d probably also be remiss if I left you thinking that either Anthericum liliago or Clorophytum comosum could treat a spider bite. They cannot.

Our spider plant, Chlorophytum comosum, is still pretty cool though, several different studies have determined it to have antitumor, antibiotic, and antioxidant properties, and the roots are said to be good salve for burns. In some places the root tubers are eaten, but I couldn’t find any evidence of the leaves being eaten. The Nguni people of Central and Southern Africa hang the plants in rooms where pregnant women sleep as a protective charm and the roots are dipped in water daily which is drunk by them as well.

The spider plant is also famously known from NASA’s 1989 Clean Air Study to determine methods of purifying air in closed environments, you know, like space stations and shuttles. I see plants mentioned as air purifiers a lot and I feel like a caveat is good to include here. The NASA study tested these plants in sealed environments with no airflow. This is not your house. Houses are far from airtight and most of us have HVAC systems, or at least open our windows on occasion. How effective are plants at snatching impurities from moving air? We don’t really know. I have a billion plants and my apartment still forever smells like my downstairs neighbor’s cooking (cries garlic powder tears). I wouldn’t expect to set a spider plant down in the middle of the table at your Uncle Leo’s stogie and poker fest and get fresh air is all I’m saying.

So that’s it! An interesting origin story, some cool medicinal properties, a little folklore, and some myth busting. Not bad for what is a pretty common, but really cool plant!

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This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious. And don’t forget, subscriptions are only $2.50/month because everything is expensive and we’re all broke.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone!

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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Imagine an opulent Victorian parlour (we have to spell it that way for the duration of this post, because rules), toxic wallpaper, large windows framed in lush fabrics, plants and tea sets everywhere, mustachioed men leaning on the mantle, corseted women struggling to breathe, everyone high on cocaine and laudanum. Sounds fun? Wait, did I say plants everywhere? I did indeed, read on.

In 1833 Dr. Nathanial Bagshaw Ward invented what would eventually be known as the Wardian case. The original case was designed to be sturdy enough to ship delicate plants from far off regions, as up to that point, these plants rarely survived a months long journey at sea. Built of glass and wood, the idea was to enclose plants and protect them from the harsh elements out on the open ocean.

Thanks to Dr. Ward’s invention, plants from the tropics could now be shipped to greenhouses in dreary old England, facilitating the birth of the houseplant industry. And the Victorians were into it. Having a parlour full of exotic plants was a status symbol few Victorians could eschew. Among the many popular plants of the time was the parlour palm, Chamaedorea elegans.

The palm was such a staple of Victorian life that it shows up frequently in art and photographs.

Native to Southern Mexico and Guatemala, the small palm thrives in low light and is relatively tolerant of dry soil and moderate humidity. Now that we’ve finally arrived here, let me tell you what I found out about this palm during my research, and also from personal experience.

Let’s start with personal experience. I bought a cute little nursery pot brimming with six-inch parlour palms. They did well for a while, but eventually each little stem started to die off. I started researching and discovered that nurseries tend to plant groups of palms together to make them appear more lush for sale, but that the palm itself is a single stemmed plant. Grouping a bunch of them together in the same pot causes what is known as interspecific competition. Basically, they all start competing with each other for limited resources, which will cause the weaker plants to die. As more and more resources are used up, even the stronger stems may die. So what can you do? If you buy a pot with a lot of stems, divide them as soon as you can into more pots, then use a houseplant fertilizer one to two times a month.

I figured out what was going on a little too late to save all but one of the stems, but after a couple months in the infirmary it’s finally getting a new frond, so I’m pretty stoked.

Aaaand here’s where it gets sad. I didn’t know this at the time I bought mine, but as with many popular houseplants, Chamaedorea elegans is disappearing in the wild, and in this case, the houseplant trade is partially to blame. Unlike other plants, palms can’t be grown from cuttings and this one doesn’t flower well in captivity. So that means, to supply the thriving houseplant trade, seeds are collected in the wild. As you might imagine, in a crowded jungle, every seed counts. Fewer seeds means fewer plants available to compete for limited space. On top of this, wild plants are harvested locally for xate. These are palm fronds used in Palm Sunday decorations, exported for use in the florist industry, and used for funerary arrangements. On top of the usual habitat loss that plagues most species in danger, this wild harvesting of seeds and fronds is having a devastating effect.

So if you have one, cherish it, it’s a vanishing species. Would I have bought mine if I had known? I don’t know… I hate to supply demand for something that shouldn’t be harvested, but if it does go extinct, the more that thrive in captivity the better? Maybe? I don’t know, it’s a tough question. But I am really glad that I was able to bring at least one baby parlour palm back from the brink, and I’ll definitely enjoy watching it flourish.

Ok, sad stuff over, now I need to bust a bit of bad info I spotted during my research. Many of the sites I visited state the parlour palm Chamaedorea elegans has edible flower stalks. While it is non-toxic, that doesn’t mean edible. In most cases eating any part of a parlour palm will probably give you a tummy ache, same goes for pets. That said, the related Chamaedorea tepejilote aka pacaya palm is commonly eaten. The young flower stalks are considered a delicacy in Guatemala and El Salvador.

That’s about it, can we end on more Victorian Era art? We sure can…

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious. And don’t forget, subscriptions are only 🌿$2.50 a month🌿

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client using the featured plant of the month - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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Native to East Asia, Hoya carnosa is also called the porcelain flower, or wax plant due to its thick, succulent flowers and waxy leaves. The plant is most prized for its fragrant flower balls, made up of the tiny flower clusters it produces, even indoors. The plant’s flowers are edible and as I did my research I learned that licking the flowers to taste the nectar is apparently a common thing for Hoya owners. The plant itself produces latex, so don’t eat the plant. Additionally, not all species are edible so make sure you know what you have.

Hoya nectar from various species is often an ingredient in perfumes and is reported to smell like anything from vanilla or chocolate to cinnamon or berries. Research has determined that at midnight the flowers produce more nectar, and that extra nectar is more fragrant. This is likely because moths are the most common pollinators of Hoyas. And of course, moths are nocturnal.

Studies have also shown that Hoya carnosa extracts are good for the skin and have antiseptic and analgesic properties.

The interwebs seem split on whether or not Hoya carnosa is semi-parasitic, or just an epiphyte. An epiphyte is a plant that lives on another plant, but doesn’t take any nutrients or water from that plant, many orchids fit this category, as well as bromeliads like air plants and Spanish moss. A parasitic plant does tap into its host plant’s resources. It gets these resources either from the host plant’s roots, or from its limbs. A few resources said that Hoya carnosa taps into its host if necessary, others said not at all. So I don’t know, but I do have two Hoyas in pots that seem to be fine without feeding on other plants.

Speaking of my Hoyas, I love them, they are two of the most beautiful and easy to care for plants in my collection. I have two Hoya carnosa ‘Krimson Queens,’ both grown from cuttings. Neither one has flowered yet, but I keep my fingers crossed every spring.

Don’t worry, I’ll let you know how they taste.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client with the featured plant of the month) - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

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We’re tackling a group of South American plants today at the lab because they all share one very interesting, and puzzling behavior. Goeppertias and Calatheas both belong to the Marantaceae family, also known as the prayer plant family. Popular as houseplants not only for their striking foliage, these plants do a complex crepuscular dance that is as impressive as it is mysterious.

Plants now called Goeppertia used to be called Calathea, but it turns out the two groups have different flower structures and so must be classified as different genera. That said, none of them are likely to flower indoors, so the distinction isn’t going to matter much to houseplant enthusiasts. To visually orient you, here are a few different types of Goeppertia and Calathea.

As you can see, they’re stunning. To me their dark patterns always seem particularly gothic. So what else makes them interesting? Their dance. Every morning, as the sun rises, the leaf stems will bend, lowering the leaf to a nearly horizontal position, then at night, as the sun sets, the leaves close up, standing vertically and clustering together.

Here’s a timelapse.

The botanical term for this behavior is nyctinasty, combining nyct meaning night and nastic referring to plant movement. So yeah, night moves. Cue the vampire disco.

How plants do this is something scientists do understand. A structure at the base of each leaf called a pulvinus facilitates movement by regulating water pressure flowing through it.

But WHY they do it is another matter altogether. There are lots of theories. Here are a few from a National Library of Medicine article I found:

(i) improves the temperature relations of plants; (ii) helps remove surface water from foliage; (iii) prevents the disruption of photoperiodism by moonlight; and (iv) directly discourages insect herbivory.

I’ll briefly explain the above. Temperature relations means that the plant moves to reduce either heat loss or the chance of freezing, depending on whose theory they’re referring to. Goeppertia and Calathea both live in wet tropical areas where water can easily accumulate on leaves, so the second theory is that the leaves stand up vertically at night to allow this water to run off into the soil around it. Photoperiodism is the response of plants to seasonal changes in light, presumably the theory is that the plant is folding up at night so that moonlight doesn’t throw off its seasonal growth. And finally, folding up at night could prevent nocturnal insects from accessing the plant.

But my favorite theory is that the plants move in order to make it easier for nocturnal predators to catch herbivores. Essentially it’s as if the plant is folding up its leaves at night to give predators more room to chase prey and to better allow scents to flow along the ground. Obviously this is beneficial for the plant as it is not only not getting eaten at night, but fewer of its devourers will remain in the morning. There isn’t any consensus as to this theory and its entirely possible we’ll never know, but I love the idea of these dark, gothic looking plants making some kind of infernal pact with the carnivores around them.

Very Machiavellian.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client with the featured plant of the month) - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more). Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can read to check it out!

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only, here’s a freebie you can use to check it out!

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There’s is a bit of botanical intrigue surrounding today’s plant. Thaumatophyllum xanadu was first introduced to the houseplant market in 1983 by a group of Australian nurseries who claimed it was a natural sport of Thaumatophyllum bipinnatifidum (you can read about that plant here).

Before we get to the intrigue, you’ll probably want to know what a sport is. We’ve talked about how easily plants mutate before in our variegation article, and a sport is just a catchall term for plant mutation. Technically variegation is a type of sport, but not all sports are variegation, if you see what I mean. The kind of sport we’re talking about here is when a mutation happens in one part of a plant that makes it grow differently from the rest of the plant. Nectarines and the Ruby Red Grapefruit are two of the more well known sports. In the case of Ruby Reds a single branch on a standard grapefruit tree suddenly grew with the characteristic pink flesh. That part of the tree was cut off, grafted and grown, and now we have pretty pink grapefruits. For the average gardener, mutated flowers are the most likely sports you’re going to spot. Here are a couple examples.

Fortunately for us, there are also spooky sports. When trees mutate the resulting sports are colloquially known as witches’ brooms. These are generally dense and compact and look like a tree growing out of another tree.

According to folklore, at least from what I could find, the aberrations are called witches’ brooms because witches were thought to both hide in them, and to use the wood to make their flying brooms. Today, the mutations are highly sought after by bonsai practitioners and tree growers alike. Here’s a deep dive from the American Conifer Society if you’re interested.

So what does this business about mutations have to do with Thaumatophyllum xanadu? Actually nothing, Australian growers claimed the plant was a unique mutation and filed for their breeders’ rights, kind of like a trademark for plants. Breeders’ rights are great for your bank account, in case you’re wondering.

But as it turns out, T. xanadu is it’s own plant, native to Brazil, and was grown from seed in Australia. Either by mistake or on purpose, the plant was claimed as a spontaneous sport, but it isn’t.

The aforementioned obfuscation, accidental or deliberate, harkens to the plant’s name, Xanadu. A name of exotic places like Kublai Khan’s summer palace, Charles Foster Kane’s pleasure mansion, that weird 80s movie I watched as kid where a guy falls in love with a lady from a painting… or something, it’s a place of illusions and opulence. Xanadu, unlike the climbing T. bipinnatifidum, is a large, low-growing plant, spreading its feathered leaves out wide in splendor, adding a little exotic mystery to your garden. But don’t stare at it too long, you might get lost inside.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the breakdown, in case you’re new and/or curious.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client with the featured plant of the month) - Paid subscribers only

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic including spells, chants, recipes, instructions, and more)

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only

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Native to China and often known as the China doll plant, this beauty is one that I had, but was eaten by my dog (RIP Wednesday) last year. But don’t worry! The plant didn’t kill the dog, she had cancer (fuck cancer). The China doll is one of the few totally non-toxic houseplants out there and can provide a safe option for pet owners with nibbling little mouths. It must be tasty, too, because she ate the whole plant. As I’ve said before, I don’t tend to be an adventurous eater, so I can’t tell you if it’s good in salads or anything.

They are relatively easy to care for and, like most tropical plants, are ok in indirect light with moderate water. They get spider mites easily, so watch out for that…. Speaking of spider mites, these tiny arachnids are called spider mites because they spin a fine sheet of webbing on plants. The webbing keeps their eggs safe and females can lay up to one hundred during their twenty-day life span. Spider mites feed by stabbing plants with their sucking mouth parts and emptying each of a leaf’s individual cells of its contents. This leaves the leaf looking pale and desiccated. We hate spider mites here in The Lab.

The two spotted spider mite is the species most likely to colonize a houseplant and they can go from born to sexually mature in around five days. How’s that for the horrors of puberty? Interestingly, spider mite females are said to be able to recognize kin, as inbreeding has a deleterious effect on offspring. So say we all, yeah?

Anyway, back to Radermachera sinica, there isn’t much research on this plant as it’s newish to the plant trade, but one interesting thing I found was that it is treated with hormones in the nursery trade to keep it small and bushy as this is apparently more attractive to buyers. It will eventually get properly tall and, according to at least one source, can outgrow your home. In their natural habitat, China doll trees can grow up to 98 ft (30 m) tall. As mine was eaten, I can’t really tell you much about growth rate, but eventual size is something to consider when purchasing. That said, as with most tropical trees we keep indoors, pot size will generally help determine the over all size of the plant. Pruning is also an option. Radermachera sinica is also known as the serpent tree due to its long, thin seed pods, which are pictured below.

I found an article in the NIH database that included Radermachera sinica in a list of medicinal plants in China’s Jianghua County. The article lists the plant as helping with “heat clearing, treating venomous snake bite, sterilization.” There are no details apart from this, which is vexing as I’d love to know what is meant by sterilization.

Bonus fact, in 1783 Jacob Cornelis Matthieu Radermacher, the botanist and explorer whom the plant is named after, was returning from Batavia (modern day Jakarta) to his native Holland when the crew of the ship he travelled on mutinied and he was murdered. He was returning home due to ill health.

Maybe our little China doll is bad luck.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the break down, in case you’re new and/or curious.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client with the featured plant) - Paid subscribers only

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic) - Paid subscribers only

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only

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The peace lily, not a lily, but an arum, is so named for its white inflorescence, reaching tall above the glossy green leaves of the plant, waving like the white flag of surrender. Perhaps that’s part of why the plant is also known as the funeral plant. After all, every one of us will one day surrender, hopefully peacefully, to death.

Flowers and plants have been common at funerals and in burials since prehistoric times. In Ancient Egypt flowers adorned tombs, statues, and even mummies themselves. For example, collars made of flowers were found in Tutankhamun’s tomb around the necks of funerary statues as well as in the more recently excavated KV63.

The Ancient Greeks decked their funerals out in wild celery, and even crowned the dead in its stalks. According to Atlas Obscura, uttering the Ancient Greek phrase deisthai selinon, which literally means “to need celery,” was declaring someone close to death.

The Ancient Romans favored roses and violets as funerary flowers and often planted roses next to tombs. A touching and heartbreaking epitaph on one Roman tomb reads:

“Here lies Optatus, a child ennobled by devotion: I pray that his ashes may be violets and roses, and I ask that the Earth, who is his mother now, be light upon him, for the boy's life was a burden to no one.”

The Aztecs believed that Mictecacihuatl, the Lady of the Dead, would allow spirits to travel back to their family from time to time, and it was the scent of the marigold that would lead them back. For that reason ofrendas erected for Dia de los Muertos always contain marigolds.

I could go on, The Smithsonian reports that graves in Israel dating from 13,700 to 11,700 years ago were lined with flowers, and there are so many more cultures with burial practices stretching back for thousands of years that include flowers. So it’s no wonder that we still include them in death care today.

As for the Spathiphyllum, I’m not sure when it became a popular plant for use in funerals, but my guess would be the Victorians are to thank for it. The plant was first introduced to Europe from Venezuela and Columbia in 1870, nine years after Prince Albert died and sent Queen Victoria into her forty-year long mourning period.

And it makes sense, too, with those dark green leaves and that solemn white flag of surrender, no plant has more decorum and grace than the Spathiphyllum. What’s more, the plants are extremely easy to care for. They can survive on low light and low water, and given optimal conditions, will flower all year round, even indoors. So they can be a lasting reminder of a loved one after a funeral.

I’ve got a standard Spath and a variegated variety. They are two of my favorite plants, they always look good, they don’t really have pest issues, and they’re forgiving if I forget to water.

Here’s a close up of a variegated leaf. They have such an interesting texture, and this guy flowers pretty often, too.

That’s it for this month, don’t forget to check out the 100% Plant-Based Horror publishing schedule below and consider a paid subscription to support my work.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the break down, in case you’re new and/or curious.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping (I use the term loosely) a client with the featured plant) - Paid subscribers only

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic) - Paid subscribers only

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only

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More commonly known as asparagus fern or foxtail fern, Asparagus densiflorus is not a fern at all, but it is part of the asparagus family. Native to Southern Africa, A. densiflorus is a popular landscape plant in warmer parts of the world. There are many varieties but the two most popular are, ‘Meyersii’ and ‘Sprengeri’.

‘Meyersii’ is the one most typically called the foxtail fern. I personally think it looks more like a garden octopus, but maybe that’s just me?

‘Sprengeri’ is kind of the ‘hot mess’ version of the plant, but tends to be the one sold as a houseplant, while ‘Meyersii’ is planted outdoors.

Friends, I have to confess that I really couldn’t find a lot of information about this plant. Some sources listed it as edible, others said just its tubers were edible, others still said absolutely don’t put this in your mouth. So until I’ve met someone in person who has eaten it and is not dead, I won’t be adding it to my salads. I’m not one for culinary exploration. And while we do eat some members of the asparagus family, it’s a big family, so pretty diverse. Among the more well known members are the hyacinths which have toxins that work as cardiac stimulants. So, you know, just because it has a friendly name, doesn’t mean it’s not gonna try and kill you.

A. densiflorus does present an opportunity to look at plant morphology. Which is more fun than it sounds, or at least I’ll do my best to make it more fun than it sounds. When you picture a plant you probably picture a stem, leaves, and maybe flowers, right? But plants can be deceiving and something that looks like a flower can really be hundreds of tiny flowers all bunched together, or something that looks like a thorn is really branch, even something that looks like a petal can really be a leaf. Plants are masters of deception.

The interesting thing about A. densiflorus is that most of what looks like leaves are really stems and its leaves are barely noticeable thorns among the faux leaves. This is much easier to see in its bigger cousin, garden asparagus, so I’ll use that as an example. In the picture below, the triangular scales on the side of the stem are the plant’s true leaves.

If this asparagus were never harvested and the plant continued to grow you would get the glorious monster below skulking in your garden. All of those wispy things that look like leaves are not, they are called cladodes and are modified stems. Since these stems are green, they can still function as leaves and perform photosynthesis.

Prickly pear (and all other cacti) are also great examples of plants with cladodes. The big green pad pictured below is a modified stem (cladode), and the spines are actually the leaves.

There isn’t a lot of scientific research on the evolutionary advantages to a plant having cladodes over true leaves, but over at In Defense of Plants, they mention that cladodes may help a plant conserve water. The article mentions that cladodes might have fewer stomata and therefore lose less water. Stomata are the nostrils (??) of a plant. They are tiny openings that let oxygen out and CO2 in. Unfortunately, they also allow water to escape via evaporation when they’re open. So having fewer stomata on a cladode would definitely be useful for plants in arid environments.

Here’s a creepy GIF of a stomata opening and closing just for kicks and because I love throwing it in when ever I can.

So that’s about it. A. densiflorus might be edible and also might not, and has imposter leaves that might be advantageous for the arid climate where it’s native. A lot of mights, but I think we can all agree it is definitely worthy of a place in our homes and gardens. Mine is a ‘sprengeri’ and is new, but I’m pretty excited for it to be a big hot mess of an asparagus.

So that’s it! This month’s plant will serve as inspiration for the paid posts in my 100% Plant-Based Horror sections. Here’s the break down, in case you’re new and/or curious.

First week of the month - The Lab (that’s this post!) - Free for everyone

Second week of the month - The Witch Lab (a short, spooky piece from a plant witch’s journal detailing one of her experiences helping a client with the featured plant) - Paid subscribers only

Third week of the month - The Spell Book (an entry from The Witch’s spell book detailing how she uses this plant for her dark magic and experiments) - Paid subscribers only

Fourth week of the month - 100% Plant-Based Horror story featuring the month’s plant. These are longer stories that include everything from ghosts, to parasites, aliens, experimental supplements, and more! - Paid subscribers only

Subscribe now

Leave a tip on Ko-Fi🌿

Check out my Etsy shop👻