Aconitum sp.

The genus Aconitum runs to well over a hundred species, the monkshoods and wolfsbanes, named for the hooded upper sepal that arches over each flower like a cowl. These plants were grown from seed collected by Frank Bell in Yunnan, China, and remain, as yet, indistinguishable from the other species Woodlanders lists; the true name waits on a flowering season and a careful eye. What can be said is that this is a Chinese monkshood, a clump-forming perennial of cool mountain ground, carrying the family's hooded, typically blue to violet flowers on upright stems in summer.

Few plants carry a darker reputation. Across Eurasia the monkshoods were the poisons of legend, the wolfsbane of myth and the queen of poisons of the old herbals, every part laced with aconitine and its relatives. In Chinese medicine, the carefully processed and long-decocted root of a related species, Aconitum carmichaelii, became fuzi, a famous and tightly controlled remedy. The plant offered here is grown as an ornamental and a botanical curiosity, never for use: all parts are dangerously toxic, and the value lies in the cool architecture of the flowers, not in any home remedy.

Site a Chinese monkshood at the back of a moist, part-shaded border, in rich woodland ground that never bakes, where the hooded spires can rise among ferns, hellebores, and other shade companions. Offer cool roots, steady moisture, and shelter from hot afternoon sun. Handsome with later perennials that echo the blue, and best set where children and pets will not be tempted by any part of the plant.