Yellow Oleander - another "Least Favorite Plant"

By at 2:36 pm Tuesday, Jun 2

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My friends Kelly and Erik at Homegrown Evolution have an interesting post about another one of their least favorite plants -- the poisonous Yellow Oleander.

Thumbing through a book of toxic and hallucinogenic plants, I finally manged to i.d. the neighbor's shrub that looms over the staircase to our front door. The popular name given for this plant in the book was "suicide tree", so named for its use in Sri Lanka, though I've found other plants with this same moniker. The scientific name is Thevetia peruviana, and it's also known as "lucky nut" (can we change that to unlucky nut please), Be Still Tree (presumably because you'll be still if you eat any of it), and yellow oleander (it's a relative of Southern California's favorite freeway landscaping flower).
Yellow Oleander - another "Least Favorite Plant"

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Mark Frauenfelder

My latest book, Made by Hand, now in paperback. Follow me on Twitter.

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