by zippo. » Mon Jul 18, 2016 12:39 pm
username: zippo♥
name: Amaterasu meaning shine over heaven
personality traits: charismatic - mischievous - imperious - graceful - divine and dangerous
favourite flower:
Kalmia latifolia, more commonly known as mountain laurel, produces delicate pink and white flowers in the late spring.
The two main toxins in Kalmia latifolia are andromedotoxin and arbutin, but it’s the first one that you need to worry about. Andromedotoxin simultaneously causes part of the heart to beat quickly and part to beat dangerously slowly. In healthy people, the heart has a natural gate that blocks half of the electrical pulses coming to the organ. The toxin induces Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome, which disrupts that gate, letting all the pulses reach your heart. The result? Sudden cardiac death.
The terrifying part is that you don’t have to eat the flowers—honey from bees that have visited Kalmia latifolia contains all the toxic properties of the flower itself. The Greeks called it “mad honey,” and they used it to defeat Xenophon of Athens in 400 B.C.