Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart

Reading Level: Adult Non-Fiction

Submitted by Gerti

With a title like that, how could I refuse this book?  I did not know that Lincoln's mother had been killed by a weed found on their Indiana farm!  But I also didn't know that one of the boys in my daughters school could get his hands ruined (and miss a school trip!) because he had been squeezing limes, and then went out in the sun.  It's in here, too!  And I thought I had it bad when I had to cut onions!

I won't call this a good book, but "Wicked Plants" is a book full of strange and unusual facts that if you are anything like me, you won't know about plants either.  I like that the plants are arranged alphabetically, and that there is a tab on the upper right corner of the page that indicates whether a plant fits categories, like "deadly" or "illegal."  My only quibble is that there are no actual full color pictures of plants, but instead drawings of the plants, which make it hard to distinguish scale and color.  I wouldn't want to try to identify poison ivy based on one of these drawings!

I am also but off by the collection of really bizarre pictures in the book that I can't even quantify. Perhaps they only occur in the chapters on illegal and psychedelic plants, but they are disturbing to say the least.  People with leaves growing out of their head are the mildest form.  Others have limbs growing out of other places, and it's just plain weird.  Despite their obvious artistic merit, I would have preferred a nice glossy photo of what the plant and its variations really look like than either the botanical illustrations or trippy etchings.

Is it worth reading? Yes, it's probably even worth purchasing for the home library, since it talks about how dangerous your carrots, limes, and potatoes can be, as well as those lovey things that grow out in the garden called flowers.  I think it's good information to have if you have kids or pets who could be hurt by eating things you didn't even know were dangerous, and therefore planted in your yard or flower box for their pretty color or smell.  Frankly, I was astonished by how many plants are "wicked," as author Amy Stewart call them.  As she says in her intro, I naively thought the natural world was benign, but it is downright scary out there!  This book makes me glad that I spend most of my time indoors!