Aconite

Overview

Aconite is the most acutely toxic plant in the European flora. A single leaf can kill a grown adult through skin absorption alone if handled long enough without gloves. The flowers are beautiful — tall spires of deep violet-blue hoods that resemble the cowls of monks or the helmets of knights, which accounts for its other names: monkshood, wolfsbane, helmet flower. Medieval herbalists knew it well. Renaissance poisoners knew it better. It appears in practically every historical account of political assassination by plant — a reputation it earned honestly, because aconitine acts within minutes, leaves almost no trace in old forensic analysis, and was for a very long time nearly impossible to detect.

Botanical Notes

A robust, clump-forming perennial reaching 1–1.5 metres with glossy, deeply palmately lobed, dark green leaves. Tall racemes of distinctive hooded flowers — sepals forming a helmet shape over the petals — in deep violet-blue from June to September. The roots are dark, turnip-shaped tubers, the most concentrated part of the plant. Found in damp, mountain meadows, streamsides, and tall-herb communities throughout the Alps, Pyrenees, and upland Europe; widely cultivated in gardens. All species of Aconitum are toxic; ornamental varieties should not be treated as safer.

Lore & History

In Greek mythology, aconite sprang from the saliva of Cerberus, dragged into daylight by Heracles — hence its association with the underworld and with wolfskin, as hunters used it to tip arrows for wolves and other large predators. The Norse goddess Hel, ruler of the dead, was associated with aconite. In Chinese medicine, processed aconite (fuzi) is a major yang-warming herb — the toxicity reduced by elaborate preparation — which tells you something about the relationship between danger and medicine. In European witchcraft it was an ingredient in flying ointments, applied to the skin in the belief that the transdermal alkaloids induced sensations of flight. The belief was not entirely groundless.

Warnings