The show might be called “The White Lotus” but it’s the flowering pong-pong tree that’s getting all the attention after that explosive Season 3 finale Sunday night.
Note: There are Season 3 spoilers ahead.
In the episode’s final moments, one of the most dramatic storylines came down to the Ratliff family versus the deadly fruit-bearing tree. Resort concierge Pam (Morgana O’Reilly) warned the clan about the dire effects during the season’s first episode, ultimately rendering it a juicy subplot that was fully explored by the end, with many wondering if the so-called “suicide tree” is real.
It’s not only real, but at the Field Museum, you can see preserved specimens of the seeds from the tree that bears them. On the second floor, in the Plants of the World Hall, one specimen from India is housed safely behind a glass enclosure. As well, behind the scenes in the museum’s private botany collection not typically available to the public, there are additional samples of the deadly seeds (one as old as 1911 that was collected by the museum’s first botany curator, Charles Millspaugh) that are available for researchers only to examine.
“I’m just excited that somebody on [‘The White Lotus’] team cares about plants because this is not one of those very famous ones. … It’s been well-known among researchers, but maybe not pop culture,” explained Kimberly Hansen, the museum’s collections manager of flowering plants. In fact, she didn’t even know the Field had a specimen on hand in the locked cabinet until the hubbub of “The White Lotus” started spilling over on social media.
On April 14, Hansen will lead a special “Meet a Scientist” conversation — open to the public — about the deadly seeds from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in its Grainger Science Hub. But before then, she took media on a tour of the museum’s “locked cabinet of poisonous plants” that not only features the pong-pongs but also jars of ayahuasca from Peru, poison-soaked darts, ricin-rich castor beans, and Hansen’s personal favorite, Abrus precatorius (also known as crab’s eye or rosary pea), which are seeds often used to make jewelry but are highly toxic if consumed.
“We have a lot of poisonous plants that are around us all the time … but I don’t think it’s stuff you have to scared of. It’s about consuming it. So if you’re not nibbling things, you probably are going to be fine,” Hansen said.
That’s certainly the case with the pong-pong tree seeds, which she handled using just a pair of latex gloves, explaining that each fruit on the tree has two of the poisonous seeds inside. Part of the Apocynaceae family that also includes milkweeds, the species is known for its cardiac glycosides or heart-affecting alkaloids, which researchers have actually studied for its possible cancer-curing benefits.
“A lot of deadly [plants] are also medicinal,” Hansen noted.
Although Hansen hasn’t seen this season of the hit series, she was filled in on the details and calls Lochlan Ratliff’s (actor Sam Nivola) near-death resuscitation a “plausible scenario. … People have survived; it’s not like it’s certain death. But also even a single seed has definitely killed people,” said Hansen, noting that the fruit was even used in historic trial-by-ordeal scenarios where verdicts were determined by someone’s survival or lack thereof.
The near-instantaneous reaction by Lochlan to vomit was also quite real.
“When you ingest something that is going to harm you, your body reacts; it’s trying to get it out of you before it gets into your system,” Hansen explained, though adding the phenomenon is not really about us as humans but rather about plants defending themselves.
“Plants don’t want to be eaten. … It’s about protecting themselves, and some of them do a very good job. Some want to make you sick and learn your lesson, and others aren’t messing around at all.”
