Nestled in The Field Museum’s Economic Botany Collection, there’s a locked “poisonous plants” cabinet — and fans of The White Lotus might recognize something inside.
“It was our founding collection at the Field Museum that represented botany,” Kimberly Hansen, Collections Manager at the Field Museum told NBC Chicago of the cabinet. “Because at that time, we were very much more dependent on plants for survival … and part of that was also medicine.”
Hansen went on to say that most medicines are poisonous if they are taken in the wrong dosage, or prepared in the wrong way.
“They’ll kill you,” she said.
The collection contains a number of different fruits and plants from Latin America, India and Asia, including fruits from the the now-television famous — and poisonous — Pong Pong tree, which plays a role in the season three season finale of the hit HBO show, which takes place in Thailand.
At the Field Museum, the fruits come from India, and look similar to small dried coconuts. In the TV show, the fruit is depicted as fleshy and fresh, which can be broken into and torn apart by hand.
“It kind of has this woody layer, and when you break that open, the seed is inside,” Hansen said, of the Odollam fruit. “And the seed is where the poison is.”
“Other parts of the plant have other poisons in them, because they’re in a very poisonous plant family,” Hansen added. “But, as per The White Lotus plot, it’s all about the seeds.”
Hansen went on to say that the seeds in the 1800s were used commonly for “trial-by-ordeal.”
“When they were investigating things like witchcraft and those types of things,” Hansen said. “It was a way to determine if you are innocent or guilty.”
Those who ate the poisonous seeds and survived were deemed innocent. But those who didn’t?
“Guilty as charged, I guess,” Hansen said.
In the season finale, Lochlan Ratliff family ends up ingesting some of the seeds when he mixes a drink from a blender in his family’s hotel room. After a near-death experience, Lochlan vomits them up, and survives.
“Anything that’s poisonous that you eat, step one, you’re vomiting,” Hansen said. “Your body is trying to get it out of your system so that you have the least amount possible actually getting to your heart.”