By Kelley Gaske

"Monkshood" (Aconitum Delphinifolium)

The cool Fall weather and shorter days have once again brought the blooms of the Monkshood in the garden.  Monkshood is a plant that commands attention in any garden.  One can hardly look away from such a brilliant bluish-purple of the delicate and intricate flowers atop giant leafy stalks this late in the gardening season.  Were it not for its melancholy undertones, Monkshood is a plant one might expect to see in the Spring or early Summer – a plant that might symbolize the birth of Spring and Earth and the joy of the new season.  But like so many mysterious beauties, Monkshood is unpredictably poisonous – ingesting the plant can result in a range of consequences from mild loss of sensation to death.  John Keats warns of Monkshood, also known as Wolfsbane, in his poem “Ode on Meloncholy�:

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

         Wolf’s bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

         Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed

          By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine

Keats also mentions Nightshade in this passage.  Nightshade, or Belladonna, is a quite common flower that was once used to enhance a women’s eyes through dilation of the pupils and is also been known to be deadly, though unpredictably so.

Monkshood and Belladonna are not the only beauties to propose such a beguiling nature.   Beautiful females of mythology have been seducing and tormenting men throughout history.  The beautiful and magical Calypso, for example, held Odysseus captive long after he realized he would rather get home to his wife (although in her defense, she was in love with him and offered him immortality).  Only after a mandate from the gods did Calypso allow Odysseus to leave, which of course led him to a whole other bit of trouble.  We also have the ravishing Circe, who was known to drug her victims with magical potions before inflicting her judgment upon them (i.e. Circe turned Odysseus’ crew into pigs after they had overindulged at Circe’s feast).

But the most exotic example of beautiful mythological women ensnaring and tormenting men has to be the Sirens.  There has not in our history been a more lucid picture painted of women whose vine of feminine seduction and human sadness has more wickedly twisted around and strangled a greater number of masculine victims, those poor seafarers who could not resist the Siren’s songs.  It is said that the Sirens sang their songs, knowingly luring sailors to leap from their vessels and either drown or else make their way to the Sirens only to be torn to pieces after the Siren Song had lulled them to sleep.

In nature, the beauties of flora and fauna alike cannot seem to help themselves but to occasionally veer from the path one might expect of a exquisite creature onto a less likely path of mischief and evil Mother Nature’s lovelies can be cruel and fatal, but luckily in mythology, the story has the opportunity to unravel itself to right most wrongs at the end of the day.