Enchanted Plants: An Exploration of Common and Uncommon Plants in Folklore and Magic

From the tangled forest to the garden hedge, join folklorist, rotten botanist, and author Varla Ventura for an exploration of some of the world’s most enchanted plants. We’ll start in the queen’s garden of cultivars, then amble over to the cottage garden where ordinary plants offer extraordinary stories. Carefully we’ll slip through the iron gates of the witch’s garden to discover poison plants that have shaped history. We’ll gallop on to meadowlands, forests, and finally the sea. From the ordinary apple to the fabulous foxglove, we’ll discover plants that have played a significant role in fairy tales, folklore, and history.

Varla Ventura

Varla A. Ventura is the author of several books, including Fairies, Pookas, and Changelings: A Complete Guide to the Wild and Wicked Enchanted Realm. As a lover of all things strange, Varla’s interests extend into the weirdness and magic of the plant kingdom. With a deep fascination for folklore and medicinal plants, she has been studying herbalism and botany for more than thirty years. Her plant knowledge comes from a combination of experimentation, formal classes in botany, and working in the horticultural industry for fifteen years. She ran a retail nursery in Portland, Oregon, as well as in San Francisco, California, and operated her own landscaping business for more than ten years. She is also the botanical brain behind Rotten Botany, a website dedicated to unusual plants. When not writing, she can be found wandering around the Minnesota woods and tending her poison garden.