Wicked Plants - Consider Yourself Warned!

Mon petite jardin is nothing to be proud about in its current state. We've had so much rain here the past three days that everything is overgrown and messy.

(click on all photos below to enlarge)

I need to do some SERIOUS pruning which is a gardening chore I always put off. All my shrubs are needing some TLC.

Even a fave plant of mine, the foxglove is also asking for some love. Which brings me to the meat of this post. I learned something about foxgloves and other plant favorites of mine during my recent visit to San Francisco's Conservatory of Flowers.

No, not this conservatory, although this was inside the real conservatory.

I'm talking about this conservatory!

They have a truly wicked and most informative exhibit while we were there. It is called "Wicked Plants" - plants and flowers that are toxic (sometimes deadly) but at the same time very common around us. It shows the botanical rogues and assassins

Foxglove, again one of my favorites, turns out is pretty toxic when ingested

And so are delphiniums, angels' trumpet, oleander, sago palm and a lot more plants and flowers that we can pretty much find in our own neighborhood and worse, our own backyard.

This special exhibit is presented so well, like an eerie Victorian Garden, it was hard for me to leave. I mean as soon as you walked in, you were greeted by this, a gramaphone playing old songs from gang and horror movies from the good ol' days. It's really brilliantly done!

I also love how they used these old fashioned signs

Lastly, here's a very cute part of the exhibit. A bottle collection that keeps the seeds and mushrooms of the poisonous plants.

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