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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Natural Histories

Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Nature that has had a profound impact on human culture and society across history.

Nature that has got under our skin and profoundly impacted human culture and society across our history.

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Natural Histories: Nightshades

Nightshades

BBC Radio 4 - Natural Histories, Nightshades

Brett Westwood looks at the nightshade group of plants and human culture. From 2015

Brett Westwood explores a group of plants that have entered our culture through food, medicine, drugs and love. From 2015

It is hard to think of a more diverse and wonderful group of plants. They enchant us, poison us, make us feel sexy, give us hallucinations, heal us and feed us. The screaming mandrakes in Harry Potter and the shamanistic dreams of tribal elders eating giant trumpet flowers testify to the magical powers of this group. Its culinary properties enhance the ever intricate flavours of modern cuisine while its fatal attractions have been used by murderers.

This is the group that contains mandrake, potatoes, chillies, aubergines, deadly nightshade and tomatoes.  These are the plants that have entered our culture through food and medicine, drugs and love.

Fearing anything that looked like nightshade the first plants that were brought here from the New World were regarded with suspicion, yet quickly we adopted them, so much so that it is impossible to conceive of Italian food without tomatoes or Friday night fish and chips, yet they are aliens in a strange land. We have a lot to thank this group for.

It soothed us before anaesthetics, sent our imaginations flying and tempted us with alluring flavours – and they are still pushing the frontiers of both medicine and food today.

First Broadcast in a longer form : 14th July 2015
Original Producer : Sarah Pitt
Archive Producer for BBC Audio : Andrew Dawes

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