Re: Cyanide

Bob Beer (bbeer@u.washington.edu)
Tue, 2 Aug 1994 16:19:21 -0700 (PDT)

On Tue, 2 Aug 1994 Ctcreel@top.cis.syr.edu wrote:

> Steve wrote:
>
> Wow, thanks for reminding me. My grandmother did the same thing,
> except she used the tabacco from cigarettes. She would soak the
> tabacco in water for a few days and then use the solution on her
> Nepenthes and other exotics. She claimed that the reason the
> solution worked so well was because the cyanide in the tabacco
> would leach out in to the water (the same principle behind the
> apple seeds).

Not Cyanide though, the poison in tobacco is nicotine. (And a good thing
too, otherwise smoking would be much more deadly...well, maybe it's not
such a good thing after all; I haven't heard much about people becoming
addicted to smoking any other immediately deadly plants! :)

Bob