Sometimes I go to a place and I tell stories. But occasionally, I go somewhere and find
not just stories but a really good storyteller. In the grounds of Alnwick Castle,
in the north of England, is Alnwick Garden. It’s not quite as old as the castle, that’s been here about 900 years or so, but it is just as impressive. Inside is one of the world’s
largest wooden treehouses, beautiful water features and also... this. The slightly less conventional
Alnwick Poison Garden. Welcome to the Poison Garden. All the plants in here
have the ability to kill you, so you’re not allowed to touch or smell
or stand too close to them. This is Ricinus communis and you can see that it has
very architectural leaves, but the issue with it is that you can, under laboratory environments,
take out ricin. Ricin is the deadliest poison known to man. Here we have Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade, a native plant to the UK. These flowers that you can see here will produce a black grape-like berry. Four of those berries
are enough to kill a child. Very toxic indeed. In Italy, especially around Venice, the ladies used to squeeze the berries to
get the juice and then use the juice to put in their eyes to dilate their pupils to make them look more
attractive to gentlemen. Because it’s toxic, slowly you start to
lose your vision. What you do for vanity. Ruta graveolens, again, a very common plant that you can actually buy from garden centres,
yet it is phototoxic which means that if you
get the sap onto your hands, then in bright sunlight
your skin will start to blister. Once that chemical is in your system, it will stay in that system
for up to seven years. Now, we had a senior gardener
who came into the Poison Garden and happened to see a weed
growing out of this plant, so without putting her gloves on
she took the weed out. Within an hour, she started to form
blisters on her hand and she ended up with third degree burns. This plant is called Aconitum napellus. It’s very common. It’s often called monkshood. The whole of the plant is very toxic. Two years ago, there was a head gardener
down in Surrey who unfortunately was working with this plant and he died a few days later, and they put that down to
the toxins from the plant. Here we have a very common plant again. This is laurel, used often as hedging. The issue with laurel is that
it will produce cyanide and in fact, Victorians used to use
leaves of these plants. Cut in two, popped in a jam-jar
with the butterflies that they’d captured, screw on the lid and the
butterfly would die naturally because of the cyanide poisoning. Now, this plant you can buy from garden centres, a very common pot plant, it’s called Brugmansia and the whole of the plant is toxic. It’s often called the Angel’s Trumpet. It’s an hallucinogenic plant so you can
use it in all sorts of ways. In fact, Victorian ladies would grow the Brugmansia
on their tea tables and then invite ladies around
for afternoon tea. What they would then do is in the tea pot, shake some of the pollen
which would go into the tea and then the ladies would to start to
loosen their tongue slightly and talk about all sorts of nonsense. We have a licence from the Home Office
to grow cannabis. So we have it here in a cage. Obviously, it’s a Class C drug. We use this plant to start
to introduce to children all about the harmful effects of drugs. This is Henbane. It produces very peculiar flowers that give off a very pungent scent. The scent is so strong that often here we
get people collapsing, that’s why we’ve got the bench
next to the wall. Mandragora, or Mandrake
as it’s commonly known, a very popular plant now because of the
Harry Potter phenomenon. The whole of the plant is poisonous. Historically, people used to think that there
was a live little man underneath the plant,
because if you dug the plant up, the actual tap root would often have
two little legs and a little arm and so people imagined
that it was the devil himself. Often people said they could hear the plant
screaming as it was pulled up, and so a lot of myth and legend
grew up around the Mandrake. The Duchess of Northumberland is the inspiration
of the whole of this garden. When she became Duchess, she had a vision to create a modern, contemporary garden that
would educate visitors. So the Duchess then realised: children especially
don’t want to listen to talks on herb gardens
because they switch off. If you can tell them that the plants
are actually poisonous and have the ability to kill you, then you have the imagination of that child. Thank you very much to all the team at
Alnwick Garden, and to Trevor in particular! If you want to know more about the gardens
or the castle, pull down the description.
So that's why the Mandrake plants in Don't Starve are the way they are. Heh.
A really interesting video about a pretty cool place and the entire comment section is about a 5 second clip where cannabis was featured.
Alnwick garden is fantastic! If you're ever in the North East of England, check it out. The treehouse restaurant is amazing.
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Poisonous plants right next to the path, but we gotta keep the cannabis in a cage. Brilliant.
He mentions that they try to educate children. I wonder how often kids try to touch the plants, or what precautions they take to avoid that.
Ain't no party like m'lady's tea party, hey! ho!
This guy needs better gardeners, cause they keep dying.
My word, there are a lot of pro-marijuana people in the comments. Just to be clear: it's in a cage because British law requires it to be. The khat they grow is too, but not the opium poppies - but because those were just tiny shoots when I was there, they didn't make the edit. And yes, "poison" is a bit strong, but for anyone who's convinced there are no dangers to cannabis, I refer you to Foreman, JE (2000) -- although of course, that's worth comparing with his later 2014 work for balance.
I wonder what the official reason is that they have cannabis there. It feels a little out of place.