Arts & Entertainment

This Killer Pong-Pong Fruit Was the ‘White Lotus’ Breakout Star. Next Week at The Field Museum, You Can Get a Rare Look at the Specimen

Poisonous plants are having a moment.

While the internet is still debating whether “White Lotus” creator Mike White stuck the landing in Sunday’s finale of the HBO series’ third season, there’s no doubt he succeeded in making a star of the pong-pong tree.

Or, more accurately, the seeds of the pong-pong tree’s fruit, which played a key role in a pair of pivotal scenes. And yes, the seeds are indeed deadly. (Though White fudged at least one detail — see below.)

The pong-pong tree (Cerbera odollam) grows predominantly in southern India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia and Madagascar, which explains why the plant’s poisonous properties aren’t well known to a U.S. audience.

But in its home range, the pong-pong has been dubbed the “suicide tree,” and because its toxins are difficult to detect, it’s also been used in homicides.

For more familiar references closer to home, think hemlock (or really anything that looks like parsley) and nightshade (aka, the tomato family), said Kimberly Hansen, collections manager of flowering plants at the Field Museum.  

Or, how’s this for a plot twist, milkweed, which is a member of the same family — Apocynaceae — as the pong-pong.

That’s right, no need to travel to an exotic five-star resort to have a “White Lotus” experience.

“We have lots of poisonous plants (in Illinois),” Hansen said. “They’re around you all the time…. So don’t do any casual grazing.”

In the two years she’s been at the Field, Hansen never realized she had a (locked) cabinet full of these deadly plants under her nose in the Field’s Economic Botany Collection. A colleague, prompted by the “White Lotus,” brought the cupboard to Hansen’s attention.

On Wednesday, Hansen unlocked the doors to the “drug and poison” shelves to give members of the media a look inside the cabinet’s killer contents.

On the top shelf: Boxes of the kinds of toxic species used for poison-tipped darts.

Those she left alone.

“I don’t want to open that. I don’t know what’s going on in there,” Hansen said.

The next rung down she pulled out a cream-colored container, with two of the pong-pong’s dried-up odollam fruit, collected in 1911, nestled against each other. If the fruit — looking like a cross between a peach pit and an avocado — were cracked open, each would contain two seed kernels laced with cerberin, a compound that disrupts the heart’s rhythm and can lead to death, Hansen explained.

There are far worse poisons in the Field’s collection, though.

Kimberly Hansen, collections manager of flowering plants at the Field Museum, opened up the cabinet of poisonous plants. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

Hansen pointed to the castor bean — “One of the deadliest,” she said — and lovely red seeds known as “rosary pea” (abrus precatorius), some of which she was wearing in a pair of dangling earrings. But when crushed and eaten, these beads release a lethal toxin, abrin, that causes a body’s cells to die.

Some of the very same properties that make certain plants so deadly could also have medicinal properties, Hansen noted, like the targeting of cancer cells, which is one reason specimens are collected and studied.

It’s also important to remember that poisonous plants bear humans no ill-will, she added.

A tree with toxic leaves, for example, is just guarding its most precious resource — the site of photosynthesis, said Hansen.  

“This is about defenses, this is not about us, this about (plants) protecting themselves, and some of them do a really, really good job,” she said. “Some of them want to make you sick and learn your lesson, and some of them are just not messing around at all.”

Though she hadn’t watched the “White Lotus,” Hansen credited the show for putting plants in the spotlight.  

“I’m just happy people want to know more about plants,” she said.

The public can chat with Hansen and get a close-up view of the pong-pong seeds and other poisonous plants during a “Meet a Scientist” event at the Field on April 14, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Pong-Pong Seeds: Fact or Fiction

The small seed kernel of the pong-pong tree packs a lethal punch. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

Let’s separate pong-pong fact from “White Lotus” fiction.

Fact: Pong-pong seeds are toxic.

Fact: Vomiting is the most common reaction.

Fact: People can survive low doses of a seed or two.

Fiction: The seeds taste rancid. In truth, they’re famously tasteless, which is one reason murderers choose them as a poison.

Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 |  [email protected]

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