Stories: Hunter Hunted 1

 

Ever since I can remember as a kid, my grandma would occasionally prepare these dried up flower buds, which are tied as ribbons into her cooking. She still does it today and I’ve always wondered what those flowers are? The quest of it, however would lead to the worst botanical poisoning in my life. 

Fast backward to my adolescence life seven years ago,  I cheered happily in front of bunch of citron daylily (Hemerocallis citrina, Asphodelaceae) because I thought I knew what they were, the tasty ribbon flower buds ! In fact, Chinese call it the ‘Kam-Cham-Fa or 金针花 in mandarin (Cantonese), which means the golden needle flower. In Malaysia, the citron daylily requires a cold spell to proliferate, and so it is naturalised in the Cameron Highlands. I happened to find them abundantly along the road, and on sale pretty much everywhere. Apart from the dried up flower buds, one can also deep fry fresh daylily buds, or stir fry them with meat. The deep fried buds taste particularly good! I suppose thousands upon thousands of people consume them every year here in Malaysia, so what on earth can go wrong with it? 

 

Since I was already at the Cameron Highlands, I asked myself why should I spend money to buy something that’s growing all along the roads. I could just pick them myself! Plus, I’m pretty sure that those were citron daylilies, they were not at all difficult to ID. But then, I came across a local farmer who warned me that some daylilies are very poisonous, and I should only consume those from the local market. I’m taking no chances, so the scientist in me took over and I researched all over (Google, haha) for information that daylily could be poisonous. Not surprisingly, nothing much at all. That means, no one is saying that they’re poisonous, no one is saying that they’re perfectly edible either! My conclusion was, daylily is safe to consume, but I decided to support the local farmers. I was also worried that roadside daylilies were contaminated with pesticides.  Thus, on the last day of my trip to Cameron highlands, I bought a huge load of fresh citron daylily buds! They were sold in packets of about 100 grams, each costing 2.5 MYR, quite affordable anyways. 

 

There we go!

Back home, my father cleaned up the daylily buds with running tap water, and stir fried approximately 300 – 400 grams with lean pork and various vegetables. I still remember it smelled so good! I was already peckish at the point, so I ate most of them, not knowing that my lunch was about to take a nightmarish turn. Within an hour, I started feeling my stomach. I remember it was a very full sensation like severe indigestion. Coincidentally, my father also consumed the daylily, albeit in a lesser amount. He too complained that he’s feeling uncomfortable. Then all of a sudden, as we were talking about it, my father had a most unexpected bout of projectile vomiting, then came my turn! We were running to the washroom to take turns to vomit! As the vomiting started to subside, we experienced the most explosive diarrhea both of us have ever endured until today. The diarrhea and stomach cramps came in cycles and we just couldn’t help it at all. In the end, we simply gave up and ‘let it go’ in the washroom for hours to the point where bowel movement felt like fire (inflammation/tearing of thin mucosa in anal opening). It was not until my urine started turning a dark brown color that I realised I was very dehydrated. We needed to do something fast. That’s the first time in my life that I wondered if I should get myself and my father to the ER. But then I calmed myself down and pulled my weak body over to make this huge jar of ORS (oral rehydrating salt) liquid with activated charcoal in it. Yummy black salty drink, what can be better? We forced ourselves to drink lots of it, and of course, in the washroom. Eventually, I could even see that I was passing black charcoal liquid. 

 

 

Hours passed like days and by late evening (4 – 5 hours late), our nasty symptoms subsided, and we were left wondering, what the hell just happened?! It had to be food poisoning and it’s most certainly a chemical toxin, because bacterial food poisoning would take much longer to show. Initially, my greatest suspect was pesticide contaminated vegetables. After all, cases like these weren’t unheard of, and the symptoms seemed to match, especially with organophosphate and carbamate pesticide poisoning. But there’s a problem, the same vegetables in the daylily dish were also found in other dishes that my family consumed in plenty. Apart from my father and I, all others were unaffected. Therefore, it was clear that the culprit had to be the daylily. Could it be then that the daylilies were contaminated with pesticides? For a few years to come, this theory remained my best explanation. 

It was said by the local farmers of Cameron Highlands that orange daylilies are poisonous and inedible. How true is that considering this is just another horticulture cultivar?

It was not until the start of my PhD project, when I took a deeper look into plants containing alkaloids that I’ve made a profound revelation. I could have been poisoned by an old friend of mine, a deadly molecule I thought I know all too well! In fact, this very incident made me realise the dangers of heavy reliance on Western academic literature. If I were to look into Chinese scientific literature (published in China), I probably wouldn’t even eat fresh daylily to begin with. And in my next story, we will finally uncover the deadly secrets of the golden needle.