Most Delicious Poison: The Story of Nature's Toxins—From Spices to Vices

by Noah Whiteman

Shane and I heard a tremendous crash early one morning in the spring of 2017 as a torrential winter storm hit Berkeley. I looked out our south-facing window and saw nothing unusual. Apparently, I was looking in the wrong direction. A few minutes later, I heard a knock at the door. It was my neighbor, who looked upset. She had just returned from dropping her daughter off at school and informed us that a tree had fallen in the parking lot behind our apartment. I followed her along the sidewalk to find the trunk of a massive blue gum, a species of eucalyptus tree, at least a hundred feet tall and ten feet in diameter, on top of my car. The firefighters and I laughed in disbelief as we walked single file on top of the massive trunk to inspect the remains of my Volkswagen Golf below, which had been split in half and completely crushed. The smell of terpenoids from biodiesel (this was Berkeley, after all) and eucalyptol burned our throats. I would have been killed instantly if I had been in the car when the tree fell. Although it was an act of God, I couldn’t help but think it was a sign, given that I study the natural enemies of plants. Curious about why a forest of Australian eucalyptus trees was thriving in the East Bay hills, I dug into the biology of these blue gums. The answer is uninteresting; they were planted for lumber and as windbreaks. In my search for answers, I discovered that they have a devious side beyond their car-crushing potential.