If you are in the literary mood for an entertaining---and horrifying---plant book, I suggest this one. Truth is, indeed, far stranger than fiction! Warning: read this volume indoors...and at a safe distance from houseplants and windows. Wicked Plants The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart Etchings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs Drawings by Jonathon Rosen Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill---2009 ISBN-13:978-1-56512-683-1 Dewey Call #: 581.65 S849w
Sounds my kind of read! And I just found an entry for it on Goodreads! http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6106482-wicked-plants
Well, jeez loueeze, Michael! Ya gotta read the book! OK, OK. It was Eupatorium rugosum (syn. Ageratina altissima), white snakeroot. "One of the most famous victims of milk sickness was Nancy Hanks Lincoln, mother of Abraham Lincoln. She fought the disease for a week but finally succumbed, as did her aunt and uncle and several other people in the small town of Litle Pigeon Creek, Indiana. She left behind nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln and his sister, Sarah. Lincoln's father built the coffins himself; young Abraham helped by carving the pegs for his mother's casket."
