For the most part, we think of plants and flowers as adding color, fragrance, and beauty to our lives. We even use plants to cheer us up, make us happy...just the way mother nature intended right? Well think again.

With Halloween right around the corner, I thought I would take you on a dark journey to look at plants like you have never seen before. The following is a short story about some plants that are bizarre, creepy, poisonous, toxic, bite and are wickedly naughty. Hold on tight, send the kids to bed and lock your doors at night, these wicked plants are lurking right in Saint Paul.

On a recent trip to Saint Paul, on a rainy gloomy somewhat stormy October day, two days before Halloween, I decided to cheer myself up and lift my good spirits. I took a detour and stopped into the Marjory McNeely Conservatory, a venue sure to be bright and cheery. I checked in with my favorite Horticulturist Margaret Yeakel- Twum. However for this Blog I will refer to her as the "Wicked plant keeper", for in the deep dark bowels of the conservatory she keeps a collection of the plant kingdoms worse dregs of nature.

Margret ushers me right away into corridors the general public is kept well away from. Off limits and staff only signs are hung everywhere. She wears a sinister smile like a crazy professor, as I become separated from the general populous the light becomes darker I start to loose sense of direction in the Conservatories labyrinth of dank humid corridors. My palms become sweaty, and I'm starting to become a little scared. I'm starting to feel like I'm in a movie "Little Shop of Horrors".

In the screen and stage play "Little Shop of Horrors" Audrey 2 is a plant that thrives on human blood. Luckily as my wicked plant keeper Margret opens a sliding green house door the first plant to greet us is "Bob 3" a fifteen foot Corpse flower (Titan Arum) that when blooms (which is extremely rare) will fill a whole room with a pulsating foul, I'll call it a disgusting odor! If you remember, Bob 2 made national news when it bloomed at the conservatory last year.

She has a cool collection of cashew and mango plants that are of the same irritating family as poison ivy. Venus fly traps that are native to North Carolina seashore mix in with her collection of pitcher plants, sundews and other carnivorous plants all ready to pounce. Pencil cactus that has a milky sap that is extremely poisonous.

She explains the seeming harmless tulip, daffodil and hyacinth are sweet in bloom but the bulbs are real trouble for pets and toxic to humans. Acacia plants with thorns like large daggers. This is just to name a few the room is filled with plants that natives use to make poison darts, leaves that will make you vomit, or make your throat swell shut or how about plants that will cause you to hallucinate if consumed. I'm afraid to touch or smell anything so I calmly keep my hands to myself I want to see the light of day again.

After my hour tour of natures worst, Margret leads me back to the sunken garden the poster child for the Marjory McNeely Conservatory. The room is filled with sweet smells of pale pink Chrysanthemums. Ah! plants that make me smile.

The Marjory McNeely Conservatory is open 365 days a year and well worth the trip any time of year .Remember to look up my friend Margret but never ever follow her behind the door that clearly states.............."Off Limits"

BOO!

Happy Halloween everyone.