VIII: Mezereum
This plant is poisonous, NOT homeopathic.
Good morning. Today is octidi, the 8th of Pluviôse, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate le mézéréon, an early blooming shrub with poisonous properties.
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This plant is also known as February Daphne for its tendency to be among the first flowering shrubs. (It's also this décade's third false laurel!) Grown in either cold climates or at high altitude where the spring warmth arrives later, mezereum is in a hurry to bud. The flowers are highly fragrant, a blaring signal to pollinators that food is back. Their bright red berries grow at a relatively normal time in summer, though, so it's not apparent why mezereum is so eager to start its annual cycle. Maybe it just enjoys the lack of competition.
Of all the ways that ChatGPT and other text generators scare me for their ability to spew plausible nonsense, homeopathic stuff terrifies me the most. I truly believe auto-generated text trained on just slightly wrong information will lead to people dying. And daphne mezereum, also sometimes called spurge olive, is a loudly singing canary in that coal mine.
