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2. Most likely to be in your garden now
Castor Bean Plant: Ricinus communis



Castor-bean plants can be purchased at just about any garden center, despite containing the deadly poison ricin.  Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants and poisonous plant expert, has an affinity for the plant and grows several in her poison garden.  Concerned gardeners can simply pluck the seeds off the plant, Stewart says, which is where the ricin is stored.  Though the process to extract enough ricin and process it into a weapon is complex, Las Vegas authorities have discovered the toxin in a hotel room in February 2008, and the KGB used it to permanently silence opposition.

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4. The plant that killed a president's mother
White snakeroot: Eupatorium rugosum



Drinking milk from a cow that decided to chow down on white snakeroot could lead to deadly milk sickness, as was the case with Abraham Lincoln's mother Nancy Hanks.  Every part of this perennial plant contains tremetol, an unsaturated alcohol that can cause muscle tremors in livestock before killing them.  "People were trying desperately throughout the 19th century to figure out what was poisoning their animals," Stewart says.  It wasn't understood until the turn of the century, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture pinpointed the cause and quickly got the word out.  Now, white snakeroot still grows wild, but more control in the agricultural industry has helped to prevent cows from eating it.

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6. Most gruesome killer
Common Bladderwort: Utricularia macrorhiza



This aquatic meat eater relies on several submerged bladders to capture prey such as tadpoles and small crustaceans. An unsuspecting passerby will brush against an external bristle-trigger, causing the bladders to spring open and capture it. Once inside, the victim dies of suffocation or starvation and then decays into a liquid that is sucked up by cells on the walls of the bladder.

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8. The most likely plant to turn a person into a zombie
Angel Trumpet: Brugmansia



The droopy, gorgeous angel trumpet, native to regions of South America, packs a powerful punch of toxins, containing atropine, hyoscyamine, and scopolamine. As documented in the 2007 VBS.tv documentary "Colombian Devil's Breath," criminals in Colombia have extracted scopolamine from the plant and used it as a potent drug that leaves victims unaware of what they are doing but entirely conscious. Scopolamine can be absorbed through the skin and mucous membranes, allowing criminals to simply blow the powder in a person's face. The documentary is filled with scopolamine-related horror stories, including one account of a man moving all of his possessions out of his apartment (and into the hands of his robbers) without remembering any of it.

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10. Best home-security system
Mala Mujer: Cnidoscolus angustidens



Stewart describes this garden plant as more painful than poisonous. Mala mujer, which translates to "bad woman," can be found in parts of the southwest and Mexico and is covered with nasty thorns, which could be turned into makeshift barbwire if needed. The real danger, however, comes from the caustic, milky sap that can leak from the plant. The sap, a common feature among many plants in the Euphorbia genus, can cause painful skin irritations and unsightly discoloration. "I've had several people tell me they had euphorbia saps in their eyes," Stewart says. "And they had pretty surprisingly long-term eye damage."

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Oh, well, here's a related Wiki item:


In Fascist Italy under the regime of Benito Mussolini, castor oil was one of the tools of the Blackshirts. Political dissidents were force-fed large quantities of castor oil by Fascist squads. This technique was said to have been originated by Gabriele D'Annunzio. Victims of this treatment did sometimes die, as the dehydrating effects of the oil-induced diarrhea often complicated the recovery from the nightstick beating they also received along with the castor oil; however, even those victims who survived had to bear the humiliation of the laxative effects resulting from excessive consumption of the oil.

It is said Mussolini's power was backed by "the bludgeon and castor oil". In lesser quantities, castor oil was also used as an instrument of intimidation, for example, to discourage civilians or soldiers who would call in sick either in the factory or in the military. Since its healing properties were widely exaggerated, abuse could be easily masked under pretense of a doctor's prescription. It took decades after Mussolini's death before the myth of castor oil as a panacea for a wide range of diseases and medical conditions was totally demystified, as it was also widely administered to pregnant women, elderly or mentally-ill patients in hospitals in the false belief it had no negative side effects.

It was also often used as both a punishment and torture by the Spanish Nationalists, led by Francisco Franco, as they purged Spain of those who supported the democratic, left-wing Republic during the Spanish Civil War.




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Goodbye, Miss Mousey...





 

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