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Gelsemium
Gelsemium is an Asian and North American genus of flowering plants belonging to family Gelsemiaceae. The genus contains three species of shrubs to straggling or twining climbers. Two species are native to North America, and one to China and Southeast Asia.
Carl Linnaeus first classified G. sempervirens as Bignonia sempervirens in 1753; Antoine Laurent de Jussieu created a new genus for this species in 1789. Gelsemium is a Latinized form of the Italian word for jasmine, gelsomino. G. elegans has the common name "heartbreak grass".
On 23 December 2011, Long Liyuan, a Chinese billionaire, died after eating cat stew that was allegedly poisoned with Gelsemium elegans.
On 10 November 2012, Alexander Perepilichny died outside his UK home, after warning of Kremlin death threats he received related to the Magnitsky affair. A lawyer for the deceased's life insurance company told a pre-inquest hearing that toxicology reports had identified traces of Gelsemium in his body. However, this was later denied by an expert at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, the Police and coroner concluded that he died of natural causes.
Graceful Jesamine · Rankin's trumpetflower · Evening trumpetflower
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Gelsemium by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
