The Snowdrop is an example of the way in which living organisms generate internal heat. This is one of the plants which, like the Broad Hellebore, may be found growing in clumps in small, clear hollows in the snow. It is the warmth generated by the plants which thaws the surrounding snow.
It contains a number of toxic substances – chiefly the alkaloids hyoscyamine, scopolamine and atropine – which stimulate the nervous system, in particular the brain. The plant is characterized by its smell and is avoided by farm animals; thus Henbane poisoning in livestock is fairly rare.
Not so with humans, however, where the effects of Henbane poisoning can be bizarre: in the old days children who had eaten the plant were thought to have been possessed by evil spirits.
Henbane, a robust plant up to 80 cm high, is an annual or more often biennial herb, forming only a ground rosette of leaves the first year. The ornamental flowers (1) grow from the axils of the upper stem leaves. The fruit of Henbane is a capsule enclosed in a calyx with joined sepals and with a lid that bursts open when ripe. Inside are thousands of tiny seeds which are hard to distinguish from poppy seeds with the naked eye. Only on magnification do Henbane seeds show up as brownish, kidney-shaped, and pitted. They are light and fall out readily in a breeze.
Henbane is a plant of barren places, abandoned fields, waste ground, and roadsides and a weed of field crops, particularly in warmer regions. It is a frequent and unwelcome intruder, for instance, in poppy fields.
It dislikes cold (which is probably why it does not flowers until late summer) and is rarely seen in the foothills. Henbane is distributed in Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia.
