Beans
Skinner comments on the bean’s “ancient disrepute”:
If one reads the records truly, it begat insanity; it caused nightmare; to dream of it meant trouble; even ghosts fled shuddering from the smell of beans. The goddess Ceres, in doing good to men, set apart the bean as unworthy to be included in her gifts. The oracles [...]

Of Pumpkins
Most people have heard the legend of the Jack O’Lantern; nevermind that originally there were no pumpkins in Europe and this legend must be a recent one. Jack, a blacksmith, was drinking one night in a pub and ran into the Devil. Jack offered the Devil his soul in exchange for a drink, so [...]

A Trio of Nightshades
There are three plants which go by the common name of nightshade: Deadly Nightshade, Atropa belladonna, Woody Nightshade, Solanum dulcamara, and Black Nightshade, Solanum nigrum.
Deadly nightshade has gone by many names, including belladonna, Devil’s cherries, Naughty Man’s cherries, Devil’s Herb, Great Morel, and Dwayberry. It was once known as Dwale. The origin [...]

Blackberry Brambles
The black berry has had a bad reputation in many cultures. The Celts considered them taboo, although they did drink blackberry wine. In Greek mythology, when Bellerophon dared to ride Pegasus to Olympus, he falls off into a blackberry bramble, which blinds and maims him. He becomes an outcast and is shunned by all [...]

Apples
The apple is well known as the forbidden fruit that Eve picked in the Garden of Eden, and in Christian lore represents sin, temptation, and the Fall. The angel of death, Azrael, could accomplish his mission by holding apple to the nostrils. Apples were present in many Greek legends, including the Apple of Discord which [...]

Elder
The spirits of elder trees were especially vindictive as tree spirits go. Destroying an elder tree meant all kinds of bad luck. If elderwood was used to build a house, the occupant would complain of mysterious hands pulling his arms and legs. Burning elderwood would bring evil into the house. In Cornwall it was thought [...]

Coconuts
While for Americans, the coconut is an exotic treat, it figures heavily in the folklore of many peoples in the Pacific and elsewhere. The Melanesians believed that a breaker of taboos would be driven to madness and would kill himself either by starvation or by flinging himself from a coconut palm. [...]

Mistletoe: The Golden Bough
Mistletoe is well-known as a sacred plant. The druids of old considered it sacred because in the dead of winter, when the branches of the oak tree were bare, and all of nature seemed dead, the mistletoe high in the trees was still green, and flourished without having roots in the earth. [...]

Evil Ferment of the Earth: Mushrooms
Fungi ben mussheroms; there be two manners of them, one maner is deedly and slayeth them that eateth them and be called tode stoles, and the other doeth not.
—–The Grete Herbal (1526)
Mushrooms are probably one of the oldest wild foodstuffs consumed by man, but also probably the one foodstuff with [...]

For many, violets are a funeral flower; it was once thrown in graves ‘for remembrance’, much like rosemary or rue, in rural England. The mourners also carried violets to protect themselves against ‘poisonous exhalations’ while in the cemetery. In ancient Greece, so many violets were placed in a grave that they almost completed concealed the [...]