November 6, 2009
Q. Plants can nourish and heal, but what are a few of Mother Nature's truly “Wicked Plants,” such as the weed that killed Abraham Lincoln's mother?
A. Cows that eat white snakeroot produce the poison milk that likely undid Nancy Hanks Lincoln, leaving behind 9-year-old Abraham, says Amy Stewart in her book of the above title. Milk sickness was so common that Milk Sick Ridge and Milk Sick Cove are still attached to Southern locales where the disease was rampant. Stewart points also to a tree that sheds poison daggers, a glistening red seed that stops the heart, a shrub that causes paralysis and a vine that can strangle — ”you don't want to meet these in a dark alley.”
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