#parkrand

oh, they ate and drank & bragged no end

about what they were gonna do.

while they scarfed up Rhododendron Honey

and Amanita Stew.

Leslie Fish, 1989

          Now & then one encounters the folklorishly exaggerated “warning” that rhododendron flowers are so poisonous that bees manufacture toxic honey from them. This honey when ingested allegedily will induce illness & hallucinations.  These warnings are invariably punctuated with the stories of Xenophon’s army sickened near the Black Sea region for having eaten the madness honey.

The locals along the Black Sea (UKRAINE) repeated the stunt against General Pompey a few centuries later. And the tactic purportedly worked again when the much-legended amazonian Queen Olga of medieval Kiev gave tribute of Black Sea honey to invading Russians, then killed the lot of them while they were in hallucinatory stupors.