Plants seem like such insignificant and hardly deadly parts of nature, with flowers smelling great and looking beautiful and trees giving a nice place to sit during a sunny day. Underneath pretty petals and a plethora of colors, certain plants are dastardly or downright deadly creations. Some look normal but kill with a single touch, others have the fragrance of decomposing bodies, and there are others that just look creepy enough to send a shiver up anyone’s spine. Take a journey through the unassuming wildlife and be sure to avoid some of these monstrous plants.
The Corpse Flower
There are flowers that have a spicy sweet scent like lilacs while others have lemony smells or a soft aroma. The corpse flower on the other hand, just as its name implies, has the sweet scent of rotting corpses. Known as a holoparasite plant, it mostly consists of thread-like strands of plant tissue standing within the host’s cells. There are distinctive male and female parts to this plant that has no roots or leaves. The actual flower only last a few days, being a meter in diameter with reddish-brown flesh, white spots, and five lobes. During this time, the foul odor attracts insects to transport pollen between the male and female flowers.
Rafflesia arnoldii is the scientific name and the flower is located in south-east Asia, the Indonesian rainforest, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The Rafflesia arnoldii is one of the rarest plants on earth, verging on extinction since it is located in places where rainforests are being demolished. Since the corpse flower is so close to extinction, it is virtually impossible to cultivate, because its need for protection and its inability to survive outside of its actual habitat.
The corpse flower has a few uses, though these uses are mostly from superstitious lore and herbalist speculations. The flower bud is supposedly used to promote delivery and recovery during and after childbirth. Other parts can be used as an aphrodisiac.
The Sundew
Looking like some strange tentacle monster that curls around prey, keeping it within its dewdrop clutches, the sundew is one of the largest carnivorous plants in the world. Their heights and growth sizes change depending on continents but they can grow from 0.4 to 39 inches. The leaves of the sundew are covered in “tentacles”, made of mucilaginous glands that trap prey through its sticky sweet secretions. The prey dies within fifteen minutes from exhaustion or asphyxiation, dissolving the insect into a soup-like substance on the leaf surface.
The genus of this plant is Drosera but the species various depending on the location. The Droseraceae family is a species of plant that attracts, arrests, and absorbs insects. With over 194 different species, it spans across a multitude of locations from Alaska to New Zealand, Australia (dense concentrations), South America and southern Africa, Eurasia, and North America. It grows in seasonally moist places, where soil is acidic and has high sunlight. They are easily found in swamps, marches, fens, bogs, and moist steam banks. These tentacle-like plants can be cultivated at home. Pots need to be 4-6 inches deep with soil needing to be peat most with silica sand (high nitrogen content soil density) and fluorescent lighting. After it has grown, sundews can be fed fish pellets, live insects like fruit flies, and bloodworms.
Herbalist speculate the sundew can be used to make teas. These teas are said to help with bronchitis, dry coughs, whooping cough, bronchial cramps, and asthma.
Venus Fly Trap
A plant with teeth is a literal nightmare, the Venus Fly Trap, with its pink and green deadly jaws, can only grow about four centimeters in maw length. It is a perennial plant, producing flowers mid-May to the beginning of June. This carnivorous plant traps insects within two hinged lobes, where the inner surface is covered in hair-like projections, shutting the prey inside. These hairs have a three trigger hair warning before it closes its trap. The digestive juices take seven to ten days and each trap can only go through three to four digestion processes before just surviving off photosynthesis.
Also known as the Dionaea muscipula, the plant shares the same Droseraceae family as the Sundew. The Venus Fly Trap is located in North and South Carolina, Florida, and New Jersey, inhabiting pine savannahs, peaty, sandy soil, and areas of consistent moisture. It can be cultivated in moist, acidic soil, lasting up to twenty years.
Bleeding Tooth Fungus
Some plants are just too weird to be considered real and the Bleeding Tooth Fungus takes the cake. This creepy fungi look like they can come right out of a monster movie, with bleeding orifices coming out of white, fleshy material. The mushroom caps, usually white or pale pink, with a rounded, multi-lobed, bumpy surface, secretes bright red liquid droplets from its tough, fibrous skin. The red liquid contains anticoagulant filled pigment that can be used for to prevent the clotting of blood. It color secretion ranges from light pink, yellow, and beige depending on the location and can be considered blood-like or juice-like. While it is not recommended to eat, the Bleeding Tooth Fungus is not poisonous but has a hot, peppery, and acrid taste.
The Hydnellum peckii is located in North America, the Pacific Northwest, Europe, Iran, and Korea. It inhabits coniferous woodlands, pine trees, redwoods, and mountainous areas, and depending on where they are located, the mushrooms can be solitary, scattered, or clustered.
Herbalists use the fungus for its antibiotic properties, helping with streptococcus pneumonia. The mushroom can be used as a dye, producing an earthly beige, blue, or green color.
Doll’s Eyes
Eyeball berries are creepy enough but these little misplaced body parts are also very nefarious in their all-seeing gaze. It is a perennial wildflower that is 1 – 2.5 feet tall. The flowers come in oblong clusters, ranging from ten to twenty-eight white flowers per cluster. These thick red stalks have white spherical berries with black dots on the dip, giving it an eyeball-like appearance. The leaflets have shape teeth, twice-divided.
The Actaea pachypoda, sometimes known as the White Baneberry, is located in mature forests around southern Canada to Georgia and western Minnesota. They inhabit rich deciduous woodlands, bluffs, shaded seeps, and high quality woodlands. The blooming season is in late spring and early summer, and fruits are produced from May through October. These plants can be cultivated in fertile, loamy soul in dappled sunlight to medium shade.
While the plant is poisonous, herbalists have found uses for different parts of it. The roots, when brewed into a tea, can be used to relieve childbirth pains, PMS, headaches, and coughs. The berries have some beneficial uses for the circulatory system. On the other hand, without a careful hand and in-depth knowledge of herbology, eating the berries can lead to cardiac arrest and death. The other sections of the plant can cause gastrointestinal inflammation and skin blisters.
Giant Hogweed
The giant hogweed, also known as the cartwheel flower, hogsbane, and giant cow parsley, is a biennial or perennial herb. It grows 14 feet or more in height with hollow, ridge stems growing 2 to 4 inches in diameter. During the flowering season, white flowers grow up to 31 inches in diameter.
The Heracleum mantegazzianum is located and native to the Caucasus Mountain region, a region around the Black and Caspian Seas. It has since been introduced to Europe and the United States. They grow along streams, rivers, fields, yards, and roadsides, though they prefer to inhabit open sites with light and moist soils.
Since the plant is phototoxic, there are many cautionary measures that need to be taken when poisoning occurs. It can causes phytophotodermatitis, Lime Disease, which is a chemical reaction that makes the skin hypersensitive to ultraviolet light. Touching either the bristles or the sap and coming in contact with sunlight or moisture, causes sever skin and eye irritation, painful blistering, permanent scarring and blindness. Treatment includes washing the irritated area with soap and cold water, keeping the area away from sunlight for 48 hours, and seeing a physician if reactions occur. Those who have a reaction usually have sunlight sensitivity for a few years.
Death Camas
Anything with death in the name automatically puts a huge warning sign on it, and the Death Camas definitely has a very deadly sign hanging from its very delicate and pretty appearance. The flower is part of the lily family tree and the small flowers do have a slight relation to the lily composition. It grows 20 to 50 centimeters tall with an onion-like appearance. The leaves are basal and grass-like, growing 10 to 30 centimeters tall. When flowering season occurs in April through July, white to cream-colored spike-like clusters take up the stems, sometimes producing brown 3-lobbed capsuled fruit seeds.
The Toxicoscordion venenisum is located in Western Canada, the Western United States, and Northern Baja California. It grows in dry meadows dry hillsides, sagebrush slopes, and montane forests in exposed sections of land.
All parts of this plant are poisonous and consuming 2 to 6% of a person’s body weight is likely fatal. It contains the poisonous alkaloid zygadenine. Animals who eat the plant have symptoms including excessive salivation, frothing around nose and mouth, nausea, vomiting, muscular weakness, ataxia, coma, heart failure, severe pulmonary congestion, hemorrhage, edema, and death. For humans, symptoms include vomiting, slow breathing, unconsciousness, dilation, and hypertensions. The cardiovascular system slows the heart and decreases blood pressure. Treatment, aside from going to the hospital as quickly as possible, includes emesis, activated charcoal, saline cathartic, and atropine.
Gympie Gympie Tree
Insanity and suicide are a few ways this monstrous plant takes down its victims and even reflects in its variety of names. The Gympie Gympie trees, also known as the sting bush, the suicide plant, and the moonlighter, looks completely unassuming with its shrub-like appearance. It is a soft-wooded shrub, reaching 4 to 5 meters in height, though there are smaller shrubs ranging around 10 centimeters tall. Appearance-wise, these plants have broad, oval, or heart-shaped leaves with saw-tooth edges. The entirety of the plant – fruits, stems, and leaves – are covered in stinging hairs.
The Dendrocnide moroides is a large shrub native to rainforest areas, Australia, the Moluccas, Indonesia, and is able to grow in New South Wales and Atherton Tablelands. It prefers habitats that are sunny and protected from winds, but they are opportunistic and can grow along streams, walking tracks, and roadways through forests.
The silica hairs are like hypodermic needles. These hairs inject venom into anything that brushes across the plant, incurring a hellish experience for anyone involved. The infected area swells, whitens, and later causes sweating and liquid dripping from the skin. If the hair is imbedded in the skin, it leads to long-term intense pain where pain can be suffered for months. Scientists have tested and tried to understand the venom within the Gympie Gympie Tree, but the tests are inconclusive. As for treatments it is advised to not rub the area as the hairs can break and be difficult to remove. The application of diluted hydrochloric acid neutralizes the hair coating and using wax strips to remove the hair is the most effective method.
Tree Nettle
Watch out for the spines of the tree nettle! This woody shrub is known as a dioecious plant, where the female and male flowers are on different plants. The shrub reaches 2 meters or higher with numerous branches, adorned with triangular, pointed ends and teethed-edged, pale-green leaves. The tree nettle is covered in stinging hairs, ranging around 6 millimeters long with pointed ends, these hairs have strong fibers and a clear juice.
The Urtica ferox is only located in New Zealand, preferring to inhabit temperate bushes, growing in lowlands, steep slopes, patchy vegetation, and thickets. These areas grow specifically in fertile soils in shady conditions.
This deadly plant has the toxins histamine, serotine, and acetylcholine that are related to parasympathetic nerve system damage. Five spines can kill a guinea pig, and while few people have died from the plant, about 75 people need hospital treatment each year. The toxins, depending on time spent, have differing effects. Burning numbness, abdominal cramps, burning in feet, visual blurring, confusion, sweating, cramps, loss of eye sight, and problems with controlling movement are a few of these effects, and some effects can last up to three days. Ironically enough, the tree nettle has a cultural importance with herbal uses and tribal medicines. The Maori culture uses the tree nettle for medicine and food. The bark and leaves treat internal and external eczema and the inner bark has a sweet taste. Brazilian herbal medicine can help with excessive menstrual bleeding, diarrhea, diabetes, urinary disorders, and allergies.
Castor Oil Plant
The castor oil plant is a sturdy perennial bush that can kill by simple ingestion. It has long, curved and purplish foot-stalks and seeds infused with ricin. The blades on the stalks droop and range from 6 to 9 inches in length. These red stalks have long veined leaves and the flowers are a deep red.
The Ricinus communis is a very invasive species, and because of this easy habituation, it is found in a variety of locations. Originally native to Africa and India, growing in tropical latitudes, the plant is also located in Algeria, Egypt, Greece, and Riviera. It’s distributed throughout the tropical, subtropical, and temperate countries.
While extremely poisonous, the castor oil plant has a variety of uses. The seeds have a potent poison, ricin, which is a simple protein that is one of the most toxic natural substances. Eating four to eight seeds can be a fatal dose to an adult. When ingested it causes burning sensations, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, and dehydration. It dehydrates the main internal organs and without medical attention, death occurs within three to five days. Herbalists use the oil as a laxative, which is extremely useful for children. Other parts can be used to make light-colored soap and a treatment aid for ringworm and itches. The fresh leaves are said to help nursing mothers have a better flow of milk.
