Wicked Plants: Uncovering the Botanical Atrocities That Claimed the Life of Abraham Lincoln's Mother

Emily List: I enjoyed reading about different plants! It's definitely a slower read with all the information! My husband was a little concerned lol!

United States on Sep 15, 2023

BR: I really enjoyed reading this book. I couldn't help but read most of it aloud to whoever was in the room while I was reading—and everyone else seemed to really enjoy it as well.

United States on Aug 03, 2023

S. Clark: I think it wasn't in as good of shape as portrayed. Still a great book

United States on May 31, 2023

Seth Tuesday: Some of the plants on here can be made and cooked a certain way to harm. I can’t believe this is legal omg lol. 🤣 in fact there’s a certain tree sap they use over seas in blowdsrts to paralyze prey. It’s crazy yo!

Canada on Sep 17, 2022

Claire E Henderson: Very impressed with this & well worth the money. The cover is lovely & it’s beautifully illustrated inside. Plus so interesting. Really recommend this little book

United Kingdom on Feb 17, 2022

Graeme Patrick: All you need to know.

United Kingdom on Dec 31, 2021

Kayy: This book is not only beautiful to look at, it has a whole collection of attractive illustrations along with its extremely informative content. If you are interested in herbalism, alchemy and the like this book makes a really wonderful addition to a collection.

United Kingdom on Jul 17, 2021

Jane Eyre: I was surprised when I began reading "Wicked Plants....Although it is a small book, embellished with line drawings, it is rather like a dictionary in style. That is, alphabetical, among different sections depending upon the category the author places the plants. I think it is quite informative in an easy to read style.

The most annoying thing is the old magazine editor gimmick of making a little box quoting a bit of text from the same paragraph I am reading. Quite unnecessary, and pads the book pages, I so dislike paying for needless repetition. The paper of the pages feels odd, it has a slightly rough surface, which I noticed as I smoothed open the pages before reading. Also, I noticed the binding doesn't have the front and back blank pages to adhere to the coverboards and spine, which seems like an odd economy to me, as I have handled thousands of books, and not seen this before. This means additional stress to the book cover as the book is open, yet the spine has a flexible fabric strip. The page numbering is odd, it's 2/3 way down the page in the margin in a decorated box, but the index uses the page number for each entry, so it's not so easy to find the page wanted....

United States on Apr 07, 2017

Happy ReaderHappy Reader: I love reading crime fiction, and got a kick out of this book just from the perspective of the many ways a plant can kill. But there are other considerations, too. As Amy Stewart says in the Introduction: "We'll brew a medicinal tea from unrecognizable bark and leaves that a friend passes along, assuming that anything natural must be safe. And when a baby comes home, we rush to add safety caps to electrical outlets but ignore the houseplant in the kitchen and the shrub by the front door – this in spite of the fact that 3,900 people are injured annually by electrical outlets while 68,847 are poisoned by plants." (This book was published in 2009.)

The plants are presented in alphabetical order, and each is put into one of 7 categories. Several, you'll see, fall into more than one category:
....DEADLY. One example is the castor bean. In castor oil, the poisonous ingredient is processed out of the plant. But ricin, found in the seeds, is the poison used to kill Georgi Markov in 1978. Remember the soviet defector killed by a jab from an umbrella?
....ILLEGAL. The peyote cactus is in this category, though I believe the Supreme Court has given religious dispensation. It's...

United States on Jun 28, 2016

Countryside Wanderer: This is an interesting book - no doubt about that & I'm in agreement with a lot of the other reviewers about the plus points so I'm not going to dwell on those.

What struck me though, was what it left out. Whilst there was a listing of various papers, articles & journals in the rear of the book, there was no index. Which meant in order to find a point (or plant) I'd already read or one which I wanted to read/know if the book contained, I had to refer to the more basic chapter headings at the front, with the not-always-clear titles about what the chapter was about, such as "don't look now" & "deadly dinner" to name just two.

Further, whilst I realise that this book has no colour to speak of (save for the rather attractive green hard cover, the sepia-tinged pages & the black line drawings), it would be undoubtedly challenging to identify any of the plants discussed - at least with any degree of certainty. Line drawings in other guides tend to list specific information about descriptive plant characteristics so that an accurate identification might be made.

Dipping into the book at random, I started by looking up on the Net the various plants to...

United Kingdom on May 27, 2014