Tut!

I'm pretty puzzled too

I live in Southern England, and we don't have poison ivy! If I were feeling generous I could say I know a couple of people allergic to normal ivy...

Perhaps the house had previously been owned by an enthusiastic amateur plantsman who brought some back from his travels?

I have had the deepest scepticism about award winning books and their levels of research since encountering Joseph O'Connor's absymal "Star of the Sea" in which on board ship in 1847 the ship's doctor identifies a sample taken from a pustule on a passenger as syphilis at night, by the use of a microscope and then tells the patient that the syphilis organism "is a living thing, just like us. It does what it has to in order to survive."

Now, quite apart from my scepticism about the ambient light levels between decks on an 1847 steamship and the quality of microscopic enhancement (frankly, in those conditions I'm surprised anyone could have accurately identified anything smaller than a medium-sized capybara) you cannot in fact identify a spirochaete like that, which is why Wasserman had to come up with the Wasserman test for diagnoising syphilis. In 1909.

But quite apart from that, Snow wouldn't publish his epic paper on cholera transmission until 1849 which was the very beginning of the germ theory of disease, and it wasn't until Pasteur et al about twenty years later that the bacterial theory of infection was even properly developed, and people like Florence Nightingale went to their deaths claiming it was quackery.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the said patient had previously been in the habit of injecting laudanum.

So I regard historical research as more of a personal moral obligation than anything which appears to affect the saleability of books or their critical acclaim, more's the pity.

On the subject at hand, there are plenty of indigenous british plants the author could have used, given the slightest tendency to do research. I'm told angelica, while delightful candied, can give you a very nasty rash in the wild.

Ivy is harmful if eaten and it can cause a skin allergy - but to distil it and put it in lipstick, No! The victim would have to eat an awful lot of lipstick for it to make her even, imo, slightly ill. It is annoying when people don't do research, especially when it can be very easy. The Royal Horticultural Society has a wonderful list of toxic plants - see here:

http://www.rhs.org.uk/SCHOOLGARDENING/uploads/documents/HTA_poisonous_plants_600.pdf


Reminds me of a school caretaker who nurtured some plants throughout the summer holidays only to be told that she would have to dig them up and burn them. She was growing Woody Nightshade!

There are a couple of UK short stories which depend on vegetable alkaloids being introduced into lip balm and shaving cream: The Cretan Bull by Agatha Christie uses datura (not common wild but reasonably possible as a cultivated plant) and The Clever Cockatoo by EC Bentley simply refers to "alkaloid poisons". I suspect you could get away with one of the nightshades or even solamine distilled from potato apples (Dorothy L. Sayers uses that in The Leopard Lady (though there the poison is directly ingested, not absorbed through the skin), but ivy is just silly.

But ... from what I understand, poison ivy was taken back to England from the colonies. According to one Google item, it now grows in Kew Gardens among other places. And from personal experience, I know it's almost impossible to eradicate.

So, having poison ivy in an English garden may not be a total impossibility. But then we still have the issue of distilling it and adding it to lip balm. Puma

Puma said:

But ... from what I understand, poison ivy was taken back to England from the colonies. According to one Google item, it now grows in Kew Gardens among other places. And from personal experience, I know it's almost impossible to eradicate.

So, having poison ivy in an English garden may not be a total impossibility. But then we still have the issue of distilling it and adding it to lip balm. Puma

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A tiny bit of googling uncovered the fact that the poison in poison ivy can be distilled and it is poisonous enough to have killed the man who first tried to do it in the 19th century. Whether it could be added to a lip balm, I do not know.

I can't think of anywhere in the UK where poison ivy grows, it's just not there unless it's in a botanical garden, etc.

there's plenty of other poisonous plants to be found in an English garden or in the countryside that would be just as lethal, e.g. digitalis, nightshade, aconite, etc.

injecting laudanum? *shakes head*
If any of you Brits would like some of the poison ivy from my back yard, you're welcome to it Trying to distill urushiol would likely result in getting the fumes in your lungs anyhow - not a pleasant prospect. And I went looking through a chemistry source out of curiosity that indicates the stuff pretty much tends to char and polymerize rather than form any useful distillate product. Big red X. All that in 2 minutes of googling. Tut indeed.

According to the items I found, poison ivy was taken back because of the beautiful fall foliage (it is very pretty - brilliant red). And as we're well aware from all the non-native invasive species every country seems to be dealing with - people have never been smart enough to think ahead to possible consequences of planting something pretty in a garden. Puma

Puma said:

According to the items I found, poison ivy was taken back because of the beautiful fall foliage (it is very pretty - brilliant red). And as we're well aware from all the non-native invasive species every country seems to be dealing with - people have never been smart enough to think ahead to possible consequences of planting something pretty in a garden. Puma

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Yes, people easily might have planted it, but nothing in my experience (which includes having an older sister who took a BA Hons in Botany and specialised in leaving a vast selection of samples of various degrees of noxiousness round the house - sort of My Family and Other Triffids) suggests they did. I had never heard of poison ivy until I studied in Toronto in 1985 and it was one of the things they warned the overseas students about.

I read somewhere that it was 'introduced in 1640' but cannot find it referred to any where else.

I am wondering if the plant that goes red in Autumn is Virginia Creeper? It is sometimes called 'five leaf ivy'. It produces poisonous berries.

According to the items I found, poison ivy was taken back because of the beautiful fall foliage (it is very pretty - brilliant red). And as we're well aware from all the non-native invasive species every country seems to be dealing with - people have never been smart enough to think ahead to possible consequences of planting something pretty in a garden. Puma

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However if it's that invasive why is it not present in the South East now? ( except, possibly, in rather specific botanical gardens) A quick google of Toxicodendron dermatitis cases in the UK pops up a whole two - one of which was caught in the States, the other resulting from importing the stuff. I can't find any reports of any other cases. Surely there would be more if we actually had any?

I did actually ask a friend of mine who's a professional gardener - he's never seen any. Anywhere. Ever.

If poison ivy is here - it's incredibly rare. So rare in fact that it's (virtually?) unheard of.

Which still makes the book in the OP have a pretty stupid plot.

If a poisonous plant that is actually found in the UK was needed, there's plenty to chose from.

Virginia creeper is pretty in the fall, but not as colorful as poison ivy. It produces a blue berry which birds consume - of course they also eat the white poison ivy berries.

On the cases of toxicocodren dermatitis - up until recently poison ivy was identified as rhus so there's a possibility older cases are classified that way. Puma

Which still doesn't explain why there are no cases if we have poison ivy. Which we don't

BTW - a google of Rhus Dermatitis cases in the UK pulls up three - from a specimen Japanese Lacquer Tree.

If the writer in the OP had maybe mentioned that say, Grandad had a passion for collecting North American plants, or some other plausible explanation, I'd buy it. Why not. But just happens to be in the garden? Nope.

There's another possibility too - poison ivy can be used as a somewhat generic term. It appears that a number of toxic plants were taken back to England from various places around the world, so there's a remote possibility the plant being referred to is not our North American poison ivy.

Understand though, I'm not defending the author, just offering some possibilities that might explain what appears to be shoddy research. It unfortunately sounds like the author based his premise on the Agathe Cristie (or other) short story and didn't do adequate research. Puma

I have never heard mention of poison ivy in the UK, even in wrongly ascribing the name to another plant and I used to be a pretty keen gardener from a family of keen gardeners.

I think the writer was just a little too lazy in doing his research.

Puma said:

It unfortunately sounds like the author based his premise on the Agathe Cristie (or other) short story and didn't do adequate research. Puma

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Unlike Christie herself, whose research particularly on pharmacology was so spot on that a nurse once diagnosed the symptoms of thallium poisoning and saved a child's life purely from having read Christie's The Pale Horse.

Agatha Christie's uses of weird and wonderful ways to knock people off were always well explained in the text itself.

And yeah, I've only ever heard of poison ivy as the US plant.

Understand though, I'm not defending the author, just offering some possibilities that might explain what appears to be shoddy research.

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Yeah I know you're not. They could be explanations, - it's not necessarily even shoddy research - it's sloppy writing.

Put it like this. Maybe a specimen was brought back near where our heroine lives and is in a botanical garden somewhere. There are specimens of tigers in zoos here too.

You'd still need a damn fine explanation if in a story one turned up in someone's garden

ETA: cos I forgot the important bit lol. And that explanation should be in the text to avoid WTF moments

Sirius said:

Oh, and I forgot to mention the said patient had previously been in the habit of injecting laudanum.

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Every once in a while I wonder, "Why am I doing so much research? I'm only writing cheese!" Sentences like this remind me why.

IdiotsRUs said:

Agatha Christie's uses of weird and wonderful ways to knock people off were always well explained in the text itself.

And yeah, I've only ever heard of poison ivy as the US plant.

Yeah I know you're not. They could be explanations, - it's not necessarily even shoddy research - it's sloppy writing.

Put it like this. Maybe a specimen was brought back near where our heroine lives and is in a botanical garden somewhere. There are specimens of tigers in zoos here too.

You'd still need a damn fine explanation if in a story one turned up in someone's garden

ETA: cos I forgot the important bit lol. And that explanation should be in the text to avoid WTF moments

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Not a tiger but not a native to this island ...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...n-Escaped-big-cat-savages-year-olds-bike.html