You may possibly have visited the Poison Garden at Alnwick Castle, Northumberland, with its ‘don’t touch’ signs, the skull-and crossbones on its gate, and gardeners wearing hazmat suits. The garden does its best to instil in us a delicious ghost-train kind of fear, even though many of its live exhibits are familiar and, frankly, non-scary, like Laburnum, Spurge-laurel Daphne laureola and Stinging Nettle Urtica dioica (the lone cannabis plant lives inside a cage and is Home Office-approved).
Peter Marren describes the natural history, occurrence and usage of the ferociously poisonous Deadly Nightshade.