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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 29, 2009
CONTACT
Leeann Lavin: 718-623-7289, leeannlavin@bbg.org
Kate Blumm: 718-623-7241, kateblumm@bbg.org
The Wicked Plants Are Advancing!
Brooklyn Botanic Garden's 2009 Summer Highlight Opens Sunday, May 31
PHOTOS: (left) The Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) is one of the best-known plants in BBG's summer interpretive program, Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden (photo by Romi Ige, courtesy of BBG); (right) BBG's horticulture staff installing Lily Pool Terrace's Annual Border, one of the ten highlighted areas of Wicked Plants (photo by Holly Regan, courtesy of BBG).
Brooklyn, New York—May 29, 2009—Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) is putting the finishing touches on its summer highlight, Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, installing the last of the horticultural "horrors" that will be on display beginning Sunday, May 31, through September 6, 2009.
Although plants have nourished and succored, seduced and delighted humans throughout history, this summer, BBG highlights a rogue's gallery of the most nefarious, troublesome, and even potentially deadly members of the plant kingdom. Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden introduces visitors to over 50 plants in the Garden whose capacity to injure, poison, or perhaps just irritate humans is a powerful reminder to tread lightly in the plant world.
Inspired by the release of author Amy Stewart's Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities, Brooklyn Botanic Garden's summer interpretive highlight gives visitors a closer look at the sometimes problematic relationship between people and plants. Some of the plants are chemically active or even physically dangerous, but those traits area adaptations that help them survive and shouldn't make us want to do away with them. Rather these plants are more evidence of the wonderful diversity of the plant kingdom and an example of the power of plants and the natural world. In ten areas throughout the Garden, including Lily Pool Terrace's Annual Border (A Garden to Die For) and the Shakespeare Garden (Scoundrels or Saints?), visitors will experience special on-site labeling, a printed guide, and the Garden's first-ever cell phone tour, in which BBG's science and horticulture staff share facts, advice, and tales of close encounters with wicked plants.
Visitors will learn about such botanical menaces as monkshood (Aconitum species), a member of the buttercup family used to tip spears for killing prey—and people; ricin (Ricinus communis), an extract of the castor bean that was used to poison a Bulgarian dissident in the 1970s; and the jumping cactus (Cylindropuntia fulgida), which terrorizes hikers by seeming to leap onto clothing or exposed skin.
But for every villainous aspect of a particular plant, BBG's interpretation will shed light on plants' redemptive characteristics. The foxglove (Digitalis species), for example, tellingly also called "witch's gloves" or "dead man's bells," causes violent reactions when ingested; but the plant is also used medically to help regulate the human heart—a boon to victims of cardiac distress.
In addition to the Garden trail of wicked plants, historic illustrations the nefarious rhubarb family will be on display from BBG's Rare Book Room. The Gift Shop will feature cards, candles, and other items inspired by wicked plants. And in the Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery, the hand-tinted botanical prints of Briony Morrow-Cribbs, originally created to illustrate Amy Stewart's new book will be on view for all visitors to enjoy.
Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden Opening Day Celebration
Sunday, May 31, 2009
2 p.m.
Wicked Plants Lecture—Amy Stewart, author of Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities. Book signing to follow lecture.
1 p.m. & 3 p.m.
Free Guided Tour: Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
2–4 p.m.
Discovery Workshop for Kids and Families: Carnivorous Plants Captured! Pot up a carnivorous plant to take home...if you dare!
1–4:30 p.m.
Discovery Carts: Eat or Be Eaten! Learn how carnivorous plants capture their prey; identify potential wicked plants; or find out how not to order a dangerous dinner!
3:30–5 p.m.
Meet artist Briony Morrow-Cribbs and view her etchings from the book Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities.
Tuesdays through Fridays throughout the summer:
1:30–4:30 p.m. Gardener's Resource Center Display of Wicked Plant Books and Resources
Tuesdays only:
11 a.m. & 1 p.m. Free Guided Tour: Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Weekends
(Sunday May 31 to Sunday September 6)
1 p.m. & 3 p.m.
Free Guided Tour: Wicked Plants at Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Opening Day and July 14–August 21
Discovery Carts: Eat or Be Eaten!
Learn how carnivorous plants capture their prey; identify potential wicked plants; or find out how not to order a dangerous dinner!
As part of this summer's Wicked Plants program, the Garden will offer a special Saturday lineup, July 25. A Botanical Etching Workshop with Wicked Plants: A Book of Botanical Atrocities artist, Briony Morrow-Cribbs will be conducted from 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. (Pre registration is required and there is a fee: $57 member, $63 non-members). The workshop will be followed by a Wicked Plants Walk with Wicked Plants author, Amy Stewart, from 3–4 p.m. Wicked Plants books can be purchased in the Garden's Gift Shop in order to secure an autograph from the author and artist, who will offer a book-signing after the Wicked Plant Walk.