TOXIC BOTANICALS
Toxic plants have been studied, cultivated, and deliberately kept for centuries — by physicians, poisoners, midwives, cunning folk, and anyone who understood that the line between medicine and poison was a matter of dose rather than intent. Many of the most dangerous plants in this archive are also the most pharmacologically significant, their alkaloids still present in modern medicine under different names. Their history belongs not only to the dangerous but to everyone who learned to work carefully with difficult things.
Holly: The Plant That Outlived Every Religion That Claimed It
Druids wore it for protection. Romans dedicated it to a god. Christians turned its thorns into a crucifixion symbol. Modern scientists finally figured out why the leaves are spiky in some places and smooth in others — and the Druids, it turns out, weren't entirely wrong.