While I was reading Most Delicious Poison, I visited a herbal garden in Spain which features the plants grown by the Nasrid rulers of Granada hundreds of years ago. They cultivated myrtle for its medicinal uses and jasmine for its fragrance. How did they know of myrtle’s properties? Some ancient ancestor must have figured it out.
Katrina Gulliver
Not everything in the garden is lovely
For as long as we have been human, powerful chemicals in plants have provided us with stimulants, analgesics – and the means of murder
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