On 27 Jul 2016 at 12:44, Kelly St. Clair wrote:

> And a final variant on the "poisonous" entry, which applies as much or
> more to plants - imagine something like poison ivy or stinging
> nettles, or bees or jellyfish, whose oil or neurotoxin or whatever
> produces the expected skin reaction and other symptoms (and may
> actually still be harmful!), but /feels/ really... "good."  Like,
> really REALLY "good." *cough*

If you've ever read the Darkover books, there's a phenomenon known as
the "ghost wind". When the season, and weather conditions are *just*
right, you get a massive release of pollen from this one particular
flower that grows wild.

The pollen is a hallucinogen. Fairly potent.

Worse, it also tends to act as a psi trigger/amplifier (extract of
the flowers is used for treating some problems unique to psis)

Oh yeah, another fun one. For those parties that get a bit to free
with the energy weapons. The plant isn't poisonous. But in the dry
season it's *insanely* flammable. goes up like a campfire doused with
gasoline. (There are a number of real world equivalents).

One stray shot from that laser or whatever and you are dealing with a
nasty fire. Or worse if there were several of them.

If it's some sort of bush in a prairie, you are now trying to outrun
a major grassfire. Not much of a problem with an air raft. *Big*
problem if you are on foot. Or if the air raft is on the other side
of the fire.

And speaking of fire, there are a number of harmless looking plants
that are a really *bad* idea to burn. Ones that don't do anything if
you *touch* them.

Seems that cascara(sp?) looks a lot like alder. And a frind tells of
the time some other scouts (from a troop his troop had "history"
with) cheerfuylly cut down a bunch of cascara for firewood and
(worse) as sticks to use for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.

Cascara is gathered for medicinal properties. the food absorbed
enough of the proper chemical to be effective. Worse, the smoke from
burning the branches also carried the same chemical.

As I recall, it's the main active ingredient in Ex-Lax.

And what the heck, be it airborne or contact, you can have fun (or
embarass) the party *and* give them a money making export when they
discover that [some plant] is a *potent* aphrodisiac. <eg>

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com