Message From Your Library Director
Something Fun: Fantastical Healing Plants
Message From Your Library Director
Congratulations to the graduating class of 2025! It has been our pleasure to provide library services throughout your academic careers. As you transition to your professional lives, we encourage you to leverage your information-seeking abilities and consistently consult evidence-based resources to inform your practice. Accessing accurate and trustworthy information is paramount to delivering high-quality patient care. Please remember that the library remains a valuable resource for your ongoing pursuit of reliable information. We extend our best wishes for a successful future.
In observation of National Library Week, both D’Angelo and Dawson Libraries set out extra snacks and drawing prizes. Students could guess the number of candies/snacks inside a plastic bear, or submit their names for a door prize by answering one of these questions:
Interesting answers resulted!
The Hunger Games tied with The Great Gatsby as the most-mentioned favorite book. Incidentally, The Hunger Games was also the most popular answer for a fictional world the submitter would least like to wake up in.
Dylan Dang, door prize winner of a Starbucks giftcard, who would not want to wake up in the world of 1984.
Other favorites included classics like Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, pop culture romantasies such as Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas, and speculative works like Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt and The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.
The list of stories students would LEAST like to wake up in was even more eclectic, including Jurassic Park, The Handmaid’s Tale, Wall-E, Nosferatu, The Babadook, James and the Giant Peach, Attack on Titan, and Shrek.
Rebecca Beringer (left) and Adam Long (right), winners of the KC and Joplin Candy Bears. They guessed closest to the total candy count of 236 (KC) and 194 (Joplin).
Overwhelmingly, students’ favorite features of the library included the quiet, communal study environment, the helpfulness of the library staff, and the front desk candy bowl. To everyone who gave us feedback, thank you! It’s extremely helpful to know what we are doing well, so we can look for even more ways to improve what’s already working.
Little known information – KCU has graphic novels! Previously scattered throughout the stacks of D’Angelo Library, we’ve gathered them together for the first time, hopefully to make it easier to catch any wandering reader’s eye. Each novel relates to particular medical conditions or phenomena, approaching eating disorders, death, or the experiences of medical professionals from a personal perspective. Our hope is that these novels will broaden our students’ perspective on these topics, approaching them from a humanistic angle. As you can see in the image above, our graphic novel collection is still pretty sparse. Please let us know if there are any books you would recommend, or any that you would love to have available!
Here are a few of the books we do have:
Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green
A biographical exploration of the author’s struggle with eating disorders through adolescence and young adulthood, examining how mental illness, body image, social pressures, and life circumstances all played a role.
The Bad Doctor by Ian Williams
Follows Dr. Iwan James, a practitioner in a small Welsh community, as he juggles the pressures of supporting his patients, community, and family and wrestles with his past struggles with OCD, all of which causes him to doubt whether he is really a good doctor.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
A frank memoir about the author’s parents’ decline into old age, and the anxiety-brewing frustration, disorienting nostalgia, and search for meaning that comes with being the caretaker for one’s parents.
Something Fun: Fantastical Healing Plants
In fantasy fiction, there are oodles of ways to find magical healing. Blessings from fairies or gods can restore injuries. Lifted curses remove conditions such as unnatural age, blindness, and even death. Video games heroes chug health potions to miraculously restore their hearts or grant them extra powers mid-battle.
All of these are completely fantastical, of course. But there is one form of fantastical medicine that has more direct parallels with reality – the healing plant.
As far as storytelling goes, setting the heroes on a fetch quest to find a magical healing herb, the only possible cure for whatever situation they’re in, is a tried-and-true trope that’s been rehashed and revived in many stories. In a way, it’s a callback to early medicine, which relied on potent plants to soothe ailments. Natural healing still has advocates today, promoting plant products as essential oils, alternative dietary supplements, and immune system boosters, which are often marketed as traditional curatives forgotten by modern science. Even in real life, we’re looking for secret healing plants.
Here's a few fantastical herbs you may have seen before:
https://whataboutdrinks.com/2015/12/27/mother-gothels-mistake-in-tangled/
Sundrop Flower – Tangled
Growing from the spot where a drop of pure sunlight fell to the earth, the Sundrop Flower possesses immense regenerative power (in true Disney style, activated by singing a song). The villainous Mother Gothel returns frequently to the flower to inhale its pollen-like vapor, which rapidly reverts signs of aging – smoothing wrinkles, darkening hair, energizing her movement. When the kingdom’s pregnant queen sinks into nonspecific illness, the flower is harvested and brewed into a tea, which restores her to health and allows her to safely deliver her daughter, Rapunzel, who carries the flower’s magically curative powers in her hair.
https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/hemerocallis/fulva/
The Sundrop Flower closely resembles Hemerocallis fulva, also known as the Orange Daylily. Native to Europe and Asia, the Orange Daylily is a common perennial garden flower, requiring very little care and serving as effective ground cover and erosion control. The blooms are edible, and the plant does have some history of herbalist medicinal use. The flower has been used as a birthing painkiller, the roots can be used as an antidote to arsenic poisoning, and a tea from the boiled roots can serve as a diuretic.
However, this author has found no evidence that the Sundrop Flower’s design was meant to hearken to Hemerocallis fulva’s medicinal uses. More likely, the design was chosen for the daylily’s distinctive appearance and resemblance to a sun’s corona, a visual symbol rampant throughout Tangled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d0ZslGu6x8
Athelas (Kingsfoil) – Lord of the Rings
The dark power of Sauron’s forces metaphorically poisons the land of Middle-Earth, and in a few instances, literally poisons the protagonists. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo is stabbed by the accursed blade of the wraithlike Witch King, and in The Return of the King, Merry and Eowyn are poisoned by the same Witch King before they succeed in slaying him. In both instances, the long-lost royal heir Aragorn seeks out Athelas, a white-flowering herb with remarkable curative properties when used by the king. Also known by its common name ‘kingsfoil’, Athelas is described as an unassuming, weed-like herb with small white flowers.
Comfrey (left) and Ornamental Bacopa (right)
https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/symphytum-officinale/, https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/chaenostoma-cordatum/
J. R. R. Tolkien constructed the herb’s name from the vocabulary of his invented Elvish language, combining aþayā (meaning ‘helpful, comforting’) with lassë (meaning ‘leaf’). It is unclear whether Athelas is inspired by any particular plant. Some Tolkien scholars suggest it is based on plants of the Symphytum genus (commonly called Comfrey), whose foliage is used to relieve inflammation, as an astringent on sores, and as a rejuvenator for sunburned skin. Others suggest that Tolkien’s description more closely resembles common basil, given its description of a ‘pungent, sweet smell’ that several characters find calming. In the film adaptations, the plant representing Athelas resembles Chaenostoma cordatum, also called Ornamental Bacopa or Trailing Phlox. This author could find no reputed medical uses for this variety of Ornamental Bacopa.
Mandrakes – Harry Potter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G17jQg_pUJg
Appearing as an arcane ingredient in many fantasy settings, mandrakes have their most famous appearance in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Mature mandrakes are a key ingredient in anti-petrification draughts, a convenient solution to the petrifying gaze of the basilisk lurking within Hogwarts that academic year. The plant’s most distinctive feature is its tuberous root’s striking resemblance to a human infant, which writhes and screams upon removal from its comfortable pot. The scream of the young plants is so piercing, protective ear coverings are required to be near them safely. The screams of mature plants are fatal.
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/flowers/mandrake/mandrake-plant-varieties.htm., https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/ethnobotany/Mind_and_Spirit/mandrake.shtml
Mandrakes are a real plant with a long history of folk medicine. Ancient Greek physician Dioscorides used the plant as a painkiller, and the plants are mentioned multiple times in the Biblical Old Testament for their reputed aphrodisiac powers. Often found with two leg-like taproots, the tuberous bundle hidden beneath the soil does sometimes have an unusually humanoid appearance. Combined with their potent soporific, narcotic, and allegedly aphrodisiac effects, it’s no wonder a strange mythology built up around these plants. In the Middle Ages, it was said that the plant could only be harvested safely by attaching the leash of a dog to its stem, then luring the dog to tug the plant out of the ground. The dog would be killed by the mandrake’s scream, but the medieval apothecary could then retrieve the root safely. While the mandrake itself has little role in modern medicine, some drugs naturally found in the plant such as scopolamine and atropine are still used.
Fire Flower – Super Mario Franchise
https://www.deviantart.com/dergamer0/art/Mario-and-Fire-Flower-957921329, https://www.trailingpetuniabulkseeds.com/products/1-000-helichrysum-seeds-monstrosum-fireball-cut-flower
While the iconic Fire Flower may bear a passing resemblance to Helichrysum Monstrosum, AKA the fireball strawflower, horticultural science has yet to find a flower that both restores the human body to optimal health and grants the ability to hurl fire from the hands.
Sources
1. “1,000 Helichrysum Seeds Monstrosum Fireball Cut Flower.” trailingpetuniabulkseeds.com. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://www.trailingpetuniabulkseeds.com/products/1-000-helichrysum-seeds-monstrosum-fireball-cut-flower.
2. “Athaya - Parf Edhellen: An Elvish Dictionary.” Parf Edhellen: an elvish dictionary, 2009. https://www.elfdict.com/w/athaya?include_old=1.
3. “Athelas.” The One Wiki to Rule Them All. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Athelas.
4. Böck B [0000-0002-0028-5160], Benítez G, Leonti M, Böck B, Vulfsons S, Dafni A. The rise and fall of mandrake in medicine. 2023. Accessed March 21, 2025. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsoai&AN=edsoai.on1380454860&site=eds-live
5. “Chaenostoma Cordatum (Bacopa, Cascading Bacopa, Ornamental Bacopa, Trailing Phlox, White Phlox).” North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/chaenostoma-cordatum/.
6. “Comfrey ‘Common.’” The Growers Exchange. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://thegrowers-exchange.com/products/her-com01?srsltid=AfmBOoq1OFvJhsxCIEfGmgDLJS4UqqdAWm1fraMzC_q3feMTwwsT_v-t.
7. “Fire Flower.” Mario Wiki. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://mario.fandom.com/wiki/Fire_Flower.
8. “Hemerocallis Fulva - L.” Plants for a Future. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://pfaf.org/user/plant.aspx?LatinName=Hemerocallis%2Bfulva.
9. “Mandrake – the Scream of Death | Europeana.” Europeana. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://www.europeana.eu/en/exhibitions/magical-mystical-and-medicinal/mandrake.
10. “Mandrake.” Harry Potter Wiki. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Mandrake.
11. “The Powerful Solanaceae: Mandrake.” U.S. Forest Service. Accessed April 16, 2025. https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/ethnobotany/Mind_and_Spirit/mandrake.shtml.
Your libraries are more than just a physical space on campus. They're a portal to virtual information that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week! Having trouble accessing resources or finding what you need? Contact your library staff! We're here to help!