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Dr Suzanne Moss🌱🏳️🌈 📚
31.9K posts
Dr Suzanne Moss🌱🏳️🌈 📚
@DrSueMoss
Director of Learning and Engagement @The_RHS | Author of #HistoricalFiction | Likes DIY | Plants and Scottie dogs | Book info at website | she/her | views mine
- Even in the Poison Garden, this little guy is in isolation. Why? Because it is one of the most venomous and dangerous plants in the world - if you touch it, the sensation is likened to being burned and electrocuted at the same time, and the effects can persist for YEARS. a 🧵
- Person of the day: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. ACTUALLY the first person to introduce inoculation to Britain. Everyone always talks about Edward Jenner (who was awesome), but Lady Mary had a good 80 years head start on Jenner, but she's a woman, so we don't talk about it. 1/
- 🏳️🌈 It's 20 years since the first, legal, same-sex wedding. 🏳️🌈 I'll show you mine if you show me yours...
- Replying to @DrSueMossDendrocnides moroides, also known as the stinging tree, or gympie gympie plant, is a native of Australia. And not one you want to get on the wrong side of. The plant is covered in hairs, called trichomes, which are like little hypodermic needles. 📸 wiki
- Replying to @DrSueMossThey are the same kind of stingers as stinging nettles - they share a family - but this is WAY worse. The needles break off inside the skin at the slightest touch, and continue to release their toxin for months or years after, when touched or bathed or get warm 📸 India times
- Our friends rescued some ex battery chickens and if it doesn't persuade everyone to never eat battery eggs again I don't know what will. Thankfully their little naked bottoms are now living their best lives and they have tiny jumpers. But we are terrible to animals. 🙁
- Replying to @DrSueMossEqually, if they are inhaled, expect sneezing, nosebleeds and possibly major respiratory damage. The hairs persist, and it is still possible to be stung by specimens collected and dried 100 years ago. 📸 electronic micrograph image of hairs by Marina Hurley
- Replying to @DrSueMossSo I'm personally quite pleased that it's in a cabinet in Alnwick - and I'm sure their horticultural team are too. But what a plant! 😱🌱
- Replying to @DrSueMossThere is no antidote for the toxin which is reported to have forced people to be tied to beds for the pain, horses to go mad and at least one person to end their own life. The best treatment seems to be wax or sticky tape to try to remove the hairs, but with limited success.
- Replying to @DrSueMossThe toxin still isn't fully understood, but an associated peptide was named 'gympietide' after the plant in 2020, through ongoing research. It is now being used to research future painkillers.
- Massonia - a fascinating and very flat alpine which is pollinated by gerbils when they run over it and get pollen on their tummies. 🥰😃
- *faints* 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 (I don't care if you're a variegated Monstera hater. LOOK at it...)
