The Criminal World of Plants Trivia Quiz

Answer: Castor Bean

The castor bean plant has prickly seedpods and deeply lobed leaves. The plant can reach over ten feet tall during one growing season. Castor oil has been a popular home remedy for centuries.

Answer: Coca

Archaeological evidence shows that coca leaves, from which cocaine is extracted, were used as a mild stimulant as far back as 3000 BC. The Incas and Spanish conquistadores recognized the stimulating effects of cocaine. Even today, in native Andean communities, coca leaves are still chewed as a mild stimulant.

Answer: Coyotillo

Coyotillo thrives in the canyons and dry riverbeds of Texas, New Mexico, and northern Mexico. Given the right conditions, the plant can reach twenty feet. The paralysis, caused by eating the berries, starts with the feet and legs and moves up to the respiratory system and throat. Not a pleasant way to die.

Answer: Jimson Weed

Jimson weed typically grows two to three feet tall. The plant produces long, white or purple trumpet-shaped flowers. All parts of the plant contain tropane alkaloids which cause hallucinations and seizures. The seeds are especially concentrated and have been known to induce a coma if eaten with food.

Answer: Oleander

In 2000, a Southern California woman managed to kill her husband to collect on his life insurance policy. She placed oleander leaves in his food. One could say that she committed murder by plant.

Answer: Ergot

Hysteria, hallucinations, and the feeling that something is crawling on the skin are all signs of ergot poisoning. The plant has also affected animals, particularly livestock who feed on the grasses that ergot infects. Rye farmers nowadays rinse their crop in a salt solution to kill the fungus.

Answer: Ratbane

Ratbane attracted attention in 2004 when it was used by an unidentified killer to wipe out animals in the Sao Paulo zoo in Brazil. Although ratbane is banned in Brazil, the killer managed to smuggle it into the country. A very sad occurrence for the zookeepers at Sao Paulo zoo and the public.

Answer: Curare

Used as an arrow poison, the toxin is only effective when it enters the bloodstream directly, as opposed to the digestive tract. Since many arrow poisons shut down the lungs and cause the heart to stop, there are no outwardly signs of what the toxin is doing.

Answer: White Snakeroot

During the nineteenth century, a few doctors and farmers discovered the cause of milk sickness. Anna Bixby, an Illinois doctor, noticed that the sickness seemed to be seasonal. One summer she found white snakeroot growing in the fields. She fed the weed to a calf to confirm that it caused the disease.

Unfortunately, since female doctors were not taken seriously at that time, her discovery fell on deaf ears. It wasn't until the 1920s that white snakeroot was widely recognized as the cause of milk sickness.

Answer: Death Camas

Dietitian and food historian, Elaine Nelson McIntosh discovered that eating death camas might have played a role in the illnesses that plagued members of the Lewis and Clark expedition in September 1805. Instead of eating blue camas, which is edible, members of the expedition, including Lewis himself, might have mistakenly eaten death camas and fallen violently ill. Since the flowers would not have been in bloom at that time of year, the two plants would have been indistinguishable.