Mickey Maloiseau, 8, looks at a Victorian dining room set with his grandmother, Susan Maloiseau, at the Wicked Plants Exhibit at the Florida Museum of Natural History on Saturday. The plates were printed with facts about different types of foods that can be poisonous depending on their consumption or preparation.
Equal parts haunted mansion and murder mystery, the Florida Museum of Natural History celebrated the opening of its Wicked Plants Exhibit on Saturday. The exhibit will be on display until Jan. 15, 2017.
The exhibit finds interesting ways to show guests the effects of various types of poisonous and intoxicating plants by interactive stations that replicate physical and mental sensations without risk of harm.
Based off of Amy Stewart’s book “Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother,” the exhibit opens into the garden of an abandoned Victorian house. Guests walk through the story by going through various rooms while learning about different kinds of toxic and invasive plants found around the house and around the world, said Chelsea Collison, an educational director at the museum.
“It’s creepy and fun and educational,” she said.
Each room features a different theme, from foul flowers that smell like rotting meat in the bathroom, to a room based entirely on a “whodunnit” murder mystery in the library. Each room has intrigue for guests to solve and experience.
For the celebration of the exhibit’s opening, local clubs and organizations brought various live, wicked plants for guests to see up close.
This is the first plant-based exhibit at the Florida Museum, said Darcie MacMahon, the museum’s director of exhibits and public programs.
There are no live plants kept within the exhibit, but plants discussed in the exhibit can be found throughout the museum. It’s difficult to keep live plants in an indoor exhibit, MacMahon said.
“They’re all wicked, so you don’t want to have a bunch of poison ivy that people can touch,” MacMahon said.
The exhibit is originally from the North Carolina Arboretum. The author of “Wicked Plants” will come to talk and sign books Saturday, but the event is open to museum members only.
There will also be several events open to the public. As part of UF’s Creative B program, there will be a murder mystery night in August, when actors will perform
Seen through a hole in the Victorian house’s dining room wall at the Florida Museum of Natural History is the garden exhibit, hosting various poisonous plants.
and guests will try to figure out who used which plant as a murder weapon, said Tiffany Ireland, the museum educator.
On Saturday, the museum also invited guests to play detective by visiting different stations to figure out which plant killed Sammy the squirrel, whose body can be found in the front of the museum.
“There’s a lot of murder going on at the museum,” she said.
Admission for the exhibit is $7.50 for adults, $6.50 for Florida Residents, seniors and college students, $4.50 for children ages 3 to 17, and free to museum members and UF students with valid Gator 1 Cards.
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