Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Strychnine

Strychnos toxifera

Strychnine
Photo: Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen, Public domain

Strychnos toxifera is a woody tropical liana (climbing vine) from northern South America and Central America, the main source of calabash curare, a paralysing arrow poison. It is not a common garden plant and is grown mainly by botanical collections; it needs warm, humid, wet tropical conditions.

Family
Loganiaceae (Logani family)
Grows as
Shrub
Light
Bright indirect
Water
Keep the soil evenly moist in the growing season and reduce watering in the dry season.
Soil
Well-drained, rich tropical potting mix or loam with added organic matter.
Temperature
22–32 °C; protect below 15 °C
How easy
Hard
Safety
Toxic: The bark, stems, roots and other parts contain curare-type alkaloids (including strychnine-related compounds) that paralyse muscles and can cause fatal respiratory failure if ingested or introduced into the blood.
Native range
Costa Rica to S. Trop. America
Climate
wet tropical

About

Strychnos toxifera, called bush rope and devil doer, is a species of flowering plant in the genus Strychnos, native to Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, the Guianas, Brazil, Peru and Bolivia. It is the principal source of calabash or gourd curare.

Macusine B is an alkaloid inhibitor of adrenergic alpha-receptors and tryptamine receptors that can be isolated from Strychnos toxifera.

Other Strychnos plants

Strychnos icaja · St. Ignatius bean · Strychnine tree · Strychnine Tree · Green Monkey Orange · Natal orange

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Strychnos toxifera by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.

The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…