Lesson Six - Herbs of Harry Potter
[[All information in this lesson comes directly from The Harry Potter Lexicon.]]
Abyssinian shrivelfig: Second-year Herbology students work with these plants, learning to prune them. When peeled, shrivelfigs are used as an ingredient in Shrinking Solution.
Shrinking Solution / Shrinking Potion
* Ingredients: chopped daisy roots, skinned shrivelfig, sliced caterpillar, one rat spleen, dash of leech juice
* Effects: Makes things shrink in size, apparently reversing the aging process as well.
* Harry had to write a particularly nasty essay on Shrinking Potions as one of his holiday assignments for Potions the summer before his third year.
* Apparently it's important that the daisy roots be chopped evenly before they're used.
* Adding too many rat spleens or too much leech juice can cause the potion to turn orange instead of the bright acid green it's supposed to be; making errors in the potion can cause the mixture to become poisonous.
* Administered to Trevor in Potions, the toad didn't just become smaller but turned into a tadpole; this was the expected effect.
* See also: Aging Potion
Alihotsy: Eating the leaves causes hysteria.
Bouncing bulbs: Repotted during Herbology class, one wriggled free from Harry's grasp and banged him in the face.
Bubotuber: A bubotuber looks like a thick, black, giant slug (it even squirms slightly, although it sticks vertically out of the soil) with many large shiny swellings on it that are filled with a yellow-green pus that smells like petrol. As Professor Sprout taught her fourth-year students, the pus reacts oddly with human skin. Undiluted, it will raise horribly painful boils on contact, but properly diluted and processed can be used to cure acne.
Devil's Snare: Devil's Snare is composed of a mass of soft, springy tendrils and vines that possess some sense of touch. Devil's Snare uses its creepers and tendrils to ensnare anyone who touches it, binding their arms and legs and eventually choking them. The harder a person struggles against Devil's Snare, the more faster and more tightly it binds them; if they relax, it will not kill them as quickly. Devil's Snare prefers a dark, damp environment and shrinks away from fire, so a well-placed flame spell such as Bluebell Flames will drive it away from its victims.
* First year students at Hogwarts learn about Devil's Snare in Herbology classes.
* Harry, Ron, and Hermione encountered Devil's Snare in the chambers under the castle that hid the Philosopher's Stone: "Devil's Snare, Devil's Snare... what did Professor Sprout say?-- it likes the dark and the damp..."
"So light a fire!" Harry choked.
"Yes -- of course -- but there's no wood!" Hermione cried, wringing her hands.
"HAVE YOU GONE MAD?" Ron bellowed. "ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?"
"Oh, right!" said Hermione, and she whipped out her wand, waved it, muttered something, and sent a jet of the same bluebell flames she had used on Snape at the plant. In a matter of seconds, the two boys felt it loosening its grip as it cringed away from the light and warmth. Wriggling and flailing, it unraveled itself from their bodies, and they were able to pull free.
"Lucky you pay attention in Herbology, Hermione," said Harry as he joined her by the wall, wiping sweat off his face.
"Yeah," said Ron, "and lucky Harry doesn't lose his head in a crisis-- 'there's no wood,' honestly."
NOTE: In the film, the Devil's Snare had somewhat different properties and was driven back by a bright sunlight spell. There cannot be bright sunlight spells in the Harry Potter universe, however, so this is one of many instances where the film is in error.
* A cutting of Devil's Snare, passed off as a potted plant, was used to murder Broderick Bode in St. Mungo's.
The Daily Prophet reported that the Devil's Snare "instantly" throttled Bode when he touched it; given what we know about Devil's Snare, is someone giving perjured testimony about the details of Bode's death? (If there was a witness competent to testify to how Bode died, and if Devil's Snare typically takes as long to kill as it took in (longer, since this one was much smaller), then somebody's lying about the details of Bode's death.)
Fanged Geranium: This plant, which will bite humans, turned up on Harry's Herbology O.W.L.
Flutterby Bush: This kind of bush quivers and shakes. The Flutterby bushes needed pruning in Herbology class. "flutterby" is sometimes used in English as a play on the word "butterfly"
Gillyweed: Native to the Mediterranean, this water plant looks like a bundle of slimy, greyish-green rat tails. When eaten, gives a person gills to breathe underwater and gives them webbed hands and feet for swimming. The duration of the gillyweed effect is approximately one hour. Snape keeps gillyweed in his private stores; it is not available to the students.
* The effects of gillyweed were first dicovered by Elladora Ketteridge. About a century later, gillyweed was re-discovered by Beaumont Marjoribanks.
Gurdyroot: Resembles a green onion, and according to Luna is excellent for warding off Gulping Plimpies.
Plimpy: (XXX) A kind of fish, shaped like a ball with two long, rubbery legs and webbed feet. If you happen to spot a plimpy with its legs tied in a knot, you will know that merpeople are around. ("plim" Eng. a dialect word for becoming plump [NSOED])
Honking daffodil: Sprout has some, but Lavender Brown, for one, prefers mundane daffodils.
Leaping toadstool: The second year Herbology students worked with these.
Mimbulus mimbletonia: Very rare, native to Assyria, this plant resembles a grey cactus, but with boils where the spines would have been. The boils are a defensive mechanism that spews Stinksap upon contact.
*This plant is a particular favorite of Neville Longbottom's, who received one as a present from his Great Uncle Algie for his 15th birthday. Like its owner, the plant grew a lot over that year.
Puffapod: Fat pink pods with seeds that burst into flower if dropped.
Screechsnaps: Semi-sentient plants which wriggle and squeak uncomfortably when they are given too much dragon dung manure. The fifth years worked with seedings of this plant in Herbology.
Self-fertilizing shrubs: Harry and other fifth years had to write an essay on self-fertilising shrubs for Professor Sprout.
Umbrella-sized flowers: Hanging from the ceiling of greenhouse 3.
Venemous Tentacula: Spiky, dark red - teething, reaches out vines toward people. The twins bought seeds of this plant from Mundungus Fletcher for use in their Wheezes.
Whomping Willow: A species superficially resembling the willow, this large, violent tree attacks anyone who gets too close.
The Whomping Willow at Hogwarts: The Whomping Willow is a very valuable, very violent tree planted alone in the middle of the school grounds. It was planted the same year that Lupin arrived at Hogwarts (c. 1971) to disguise the opening to a secret passage from Hogwarts to the Shrieking Shack. Lupin would go through a hole in the Willow's roots every month to transform into a werewolf in the Shack where he couldn't hurt anyone. The Willow was so dangerous that it kept other people from entering the passage and encountering the werewolf.
No one was ever told what the Willow was really for. What people did know was that it would attack anyone who came within reach of its branches. Harry's Nimbus 2000 broomstick sailed into the Willow and was smashed to bits. Harry and Ron accidentally crashed the flying Ford Anglia into it, and the tree severely dented and smashed the car before it could reverse out of range of the swinging branches.
Lupin told Harry that "people used to play a game, trying to get near enough to touch the trunk. In the end, a boy called Davey Gudgeon nearly lost an eye, and we were forbidden to go near it. No broomstick would have a chance." However, there is a way to temporarily paralyze the tree. There is a particular knot on the trunk which can be pressed using a long branch in order to stop the attacks.