Plants That Kill: A Natural History of the World's Most Poisonous Plants

Absolutely gorgeous book, I bought it as a birthday present for my husband and he loves it. The quality is great, it's bigger than I expected, which I love. The pages feel nice and the pictures are great. It's very informative, and I love how scientific it gets (but in an easy to understand way - it's not dry).

Came in perfect condition, beautiful photographs and some illustrations. Can't wait to start reading!

This new book on Poisonous Plants is full of excellent quality images. The text is accurate and full of case studies of the toxic effects of plants and explores the chemistry of many poisons that some plants may contain. I have to declare an interest, in that one of the authors has corresponded with me in the past and helped me where possible in my own poisonous plants researches. Dr Dauncey is based at Kew and has spent many years (certainly more than a decade) involved with the identification and effects of poisonous plants in Enland. She has already been a co-author of two volumes linked to this subject concerning plants growing in Britain. However, the remit of this title encompasses plants from all over the world and the large size of the book permits more exploration of the chemistry and groups of compounds found in these sometimes exotic plants. The structure of the book is one of themes and I think the concept works well in illustrating how different toxins can be. They may act on the heart or the brain, or the liver, or other parts of the body. The themes demonstrate the variety of poisons and their differing effects and are frequently biologically and chemically not related at all. So each section of the book can be extremely varied, to make this point. Also, some plants I had not seen in print before, such as the mexican prickly poppy contaminating crops grown to make cooking oil (mustard seed oil) led in 1998 to 3,000 hospitalisations and 60 deaths in one incident. A wide ranging title, that has great photographs and learned content that should interest anyone interested in learning about Poisonous Plants and their roles in nature and communities around the world.

This book is built very competently: excellent classification (except of last chapter, plants of which should be classified between other chapters of the book); scientific descriptions of plants, their toxins and mechanism of action of latter; interesting topics from poisonous plants' history and poisonings, including history of drugs based on those plants; a lot of beautiful photos and pictures; great introduction, that enables all of the people to read and understand medical and botanical scientific manner; short description of some of the plant families. It is really interesting, that plants described here are not just banal plants like Deadly nightshade, but also a lot of interesting tropical plants, that you won't see of or hear of every day. As a pharmacist (and a scientist generally) I liked the scientific way of content description using medical and botanical terms. I'm glad that this book became my first book about poisonous plants and opened me that enchanting world!

Amazing book! As a person who doesn't have much knowledge on the subject i love the detailed yet relevant explanations. The pictures are beautiful. I enjoy this book soooooo much.