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Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants:The Weed that Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities is hitting the road with her brand-new book, Wicked Bugs:The Louse that Conquered Napoleon's Army and other Diabolical Insects. And (and!) not only is she visiting the Missouri Botanical Garden on April 30, but is doing something a little different: a "Wicked Trees" lecture to help MoBot kick of their TREEmendous celebration. Then, after leaving St. Louis, she'll make a trip to one of our favorite places, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, to take part in their Spring Planting Festival. We spoke with Stewart earlier this week, right about the time that her interview with Terri Gross was airing on NPR's "Fresh Air." (Stream that interview here.)
St. Louis Magazine: I saw that you were coming our way on the Garden Rant blog, but the date was coming up so fast, I didn't have time to read the book, so I apologize. i wanted to start with the fact that you're doing something a little different here in St. Louis, a presentation called "Wicked Trees," in tandem with the Missouri Botanical Garden's TREEmendous Celebration.
Amy Stewart: Yeah! That's right, it just so happened that they day we had scheduled for this event was the kick-off for the whole TREEmendous thing. So I said, well, why don't we do something that ties in with trees? So what I've done is taken all of the trees out of Wicked Plants—the trees that are poisonous, the trees that are painful, the horrible, wicked, evil trees—and I've also taken all the tree-related stories out of Wicked Bugs, which includes insects that harm trees in some way. And then I kind of mashed them together. But this is probably the one and only time in my life that I will do "Wicked Trees!" [Laughs.]
SLM: So what are some of these terrible trees? Trees always seem so benign. You know, like the Ents in Lord of the Rings, and that whole idea of a tree-hugger...
AS: Yes, and you know, I come from Redwood Country, Redwoods have to be among the most majestic and revered trees in the world. But you know, there's a dark side to horticulture. [Laughs.] There's a dark side to everything. So the world's most painful plant is a tree; it's called the giant stinging tree. It inflicts a dreadful, dreadful sting that lasts up to a year, if you can believe that. It's incredibly painful. Strychnine comes from a tree; it's from the seeds of the Strychnine tree, and it's a very nasty poison. There are many relatives of poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac that are themselves trees. For instance, the cashew tree will give people the same kind of awful reaction that they get from poison ivy or poison oak. And the only part of the cashew tree, the part that we eat, it's the only part of that tree that will not give you that reaction. That's why you have never taken a cashew nut out of its shell. You'd get a very nasty rash if you did that, so they're actually steamed open so that no one has to handle the shells. Who knew, right? The cashews are totally safe. Urushiol is the name of that awful toxic compound that gives people rashes. It's actually not toxic, it's just something that humans are very, very allergic to.
SLM: So for this event, you are doing sort of a basic book signing and reading, too, right, for Wicked Bugs?
AS: Yes. I'll have a slide show...and then I'll be signing copies of Wicked Bugs, and probably also Wicked Plants, I'm going to guess they have both books.
SLM: I saw you're also traveling with bugs encased in Lucite, packed into your suitcase.
AS: Oh, yeah! They've turned into little media stars. They've been on TV three times this trip, and they've made some live radio appearances as well. You wouldn't think that dead bugs would be all that interesting on the radio, but I bring them into the studio with me anyway. [Laughs.]
SLM: So what are audiences asking you about?
AS: You can never tell, with a subject like bugs, how into it people are going to be. But anyone who's read Wicked Plants gets it. Which is that I'm really telling human stories. For every bug, and this was true for the plants as well, it didn't really matter that it could kill someone, my question was, well, who has it killed? I was looking for historical figures, or figures out of literature, so there's a lot of history and culture and politics and science kind of all mixed up. I think people who are even creeped out by the bugs still get into all that stuff. They still want to hear about Napoleon, and George Washington, and Christopher Columbus. There's all these kind of interesting little historical moments that come up and make it fun, I think.
SLM: The story that really got me was the Formosan termites, nibbling away at the levees down in New Orleans.
AS: Right. The formosan termite in particular, I'm just trying to visualize the map of where they're distributed to remember if they get as far as St. Louis. They might not. It might be too cold in the winter, but they're definitely in the Southern United States, and many other places around the world. But yeah, it's an amazing story. First of all, the first guy who was working on these termites was murdered is so....just shocking. And he still has friends in New Orleans who believe that this was not a random act of violence, that there were different forces at work in New Orleans as far as how to control termites. None of that was ever established, but whenever I talk to people about him, I definitely heard all of these suspicions. So Greg Henderson eventually took up that fight, and he's kind of been this voice, saying, "You know the flood walls are made of sugar cane waste, and you realize that the termites are eating them, and I know they're small, but you just can't believe what they are capable of doing." So when Katrina happened, he said that he just could just feel this sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he just felt like those floodwalls would give way. And that the termites could have a role in that. Even Greg is very clear to say look, the thing that destroyed New Orleans was the hurricane. [Laughs.] Let's place the responsibility where it belongs. But the termites had a role. And he continues to this day to try to convince the Army Corps of Engineers to let him set up these stations that will draw the termites away from the floodwalls, where they can be easily controlled. The problem with the floodwalls is that it's a waterway—you can't just douse it with chemicals. But what you can do is set up a bait station nearby that will lure them into a small, little wooden structure that can easily be contained and sprayed safely with a chemical that will kill them, but will be contained within this little enclosed structure. He's tried to make that happen, and people are not listening. He's not making a lot of headway.
SLM: That's odd; because apparently these things are eating up the French Quarter. And that's sort of the crux of their tourism economy, so you'd think they'd listen at least on that account.
AS: Termite control in the French Quarter is an ongoing struggle for them. It really is. They're dense. If you're in the French Quarter in June, when the adults are flying around, it can be pretty tough to be there in the early evening, when they're all swarming. [Laughs.] It's pretty nasty.
SLM: I wanted to talk about Wicked Plants, too. For one thing, I was curious about this weed in the subtitle, the one that killed Lincoln's mother!
AS: Well, the weed that killed Lincoln's mother is a weed called white snakeroot. And I think it grows around where you are. It's native to North America, and it's poisonous. What would happen is that cows would eat the plant, the poison ends up in the milk, the cows get sick, but then people drink the milk and die. And this was called milk sickness, and it was a terrible problem in the 19th century and before. So Abraham Lincoln's mother died of milk sickness, from drinking milk that was contaminated with the toxins from a poisonous plant.
SLM: Which reminds me of the crazy story about the Romans, and bees, and how they would feed them certain things to make the honey toxic, and then poison their enemies that way. Which I guess could still happen?
AS: The thing is, bees would just as soon not imbibe overly of the rhododendrons and azaleas. But if for some reason there were not a lot of food sources, and that is what was available, and they had very high quantities of it, it would in theory for them even today to produce honey that was toxic. But it's so unlikely, because they would prefer not to eat it, and of course most honey, even a boutique producer of honey is combining honey from a lot of different sources, and so on and so forth.
SLM: Your books have a really different take on plants, trees, bugs, nature—it seems like you understand that nature does have a dark side, whereas in mainstream culture it seems like it's either cuddly bunnies or something to be eradicated at all costs. And your take seems more nuanced than that. So how did you develop your relationship to the natural world?
AS: I'm really interested in storytelling. So I'm always in it for a good story. And a good story can have a happy ending. And in fact, there are some in Wicked Bugs. There's a story that I love to tell about a horrible disease, this horrible parasitic disease that makes people's lives very miserable in Africa, that has been almost completely eradicated through the world of the Carter Foundation...this is a disease called lymphatic filariasis, or elephantitis. It's transmitted by mosquitoes, and it can be treated by giving people one pill a year, a simple deworming pill that doesn't cost very much money. And it's complicated to get people to take one pill a year in remote villages in Africa, but setting that aside, that eventually will eradicate it in populations. The name of the pill is Mectizan. People take it, and they start to feel so much better, because not only is their body ridded of that parasite, but all other parasites: roundworms, tapeworms, anything that might have been afflicting them. Anything that might be living on them, like scabies, bedbugs or lice, just fall right up. So their skin clears up, they feel a lot better, their stomach's not upset all the time. And once they start feeling good, and looking good, there's this little baby boom that happens in villages. The Carter Center folks have reported that people have even named their babies Mectizan, after the pill! Which I find such a charming story, and a love story in the face of this horrible plague in Africa. So I love stories. We do tend to be drawn toward dramatic, tragic stories. We love murder mysteries. There's a reason Law and Order is so popular, good guys versus bad guys. We love that. So I love telling those stories. So when you love to tell stories, you can end up on the happy, or the unhappy side! [Laughs.] When you're looking at the natural world, and science, you're not looking at the critters in isolation. You're looking at how they interact with us, and how we respond to them, and how we live alongside them.
SLM: And now, all of those stories out of your books are sort of coming to life in these exhibits that are popping up all over the place.
AS: This was not something I expected to happen, though I sort of cooked up the first one with Brooklyn Botanical Garden. I badgered them into it, and said "This is something you should do...get people in here, tell them interesting stories! It's more than just pretty scenery. You're a museum, and museums tell stories!" I persuaded them that would be a good thing. But then, you wouldn't believe the momentum behind this. The Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco opened a Wicked Plants exhibit, Tuscon Botanical Garden did one, and I've heard from three other botancial gardens this week who want to do one. Then there's a national traveling exhibit that's going to start in North Carolina and travel all over the country. And same with Wicked Bugs, there's a company that builds traveling exhibits about bugs—that's what they do. And so they're doing a Wicked Bugs traveling exhibit as well. It's neat, and it gives institutions and different way to bring people in. If their members and audience start to feel like oh, I've been to the garden, I've been to the zoo, I've been to the museum. This is something kind of dark and scary and weird, and it draws a totally different crowd. The exhibit that just opened at the Conservatory of Flowers, there were a lot of tattoos on the people coming through that exhibit! It was a really hipster, goth crowd. And I thought, I'll bet these people have never been to the Conservatory of Flowers.
SLM: And you guys even did temporary tattoos for the exhibit.
AS: Oh, my god, I was so excited about that! And there were shot glasses as well. [Laughs.]
“Wicked Trees: The Dark Side of the Arboreal World,” takes place at 11 a.m. April 30 at Missouri Botanical Garden, 4344 Shaw, 577-5100, 1-800-642-8842, mobot.org. Admission is $4 for St. Louis City and County residents, free for kids ages 12 and under and Garden members.
