There are so many plants that can kill or injure us that poisoning from ingesting local plants is an indicator of a human population's recent move into a new area. Finally, to expand on Ames' view of coevolving toxins and human defenses, natural toxins evolved for their acute toxicity. Looking at the plant's side, the toxins have worked well. We've now taken on that task for the plants, with overall positive, but mixed, results. We've bred so many natural defenses out of plants that we still lose a significant fraction of our crop production to insects, despite pesticide use.
Insects love our tasty low-toxicity varieties.
Pesticides take up the slack and are worth it, but we must respect their potency. She was the mother of Mary de Rachewiltz, Pound's only natural child, and was his companion for 50 years. In her youth, Rudge was a well-known concert violinist and Vivaldi scholar, later acting as administrative director of the prestigious Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena. After Pound's return to Italy, she cared for the poet and gave him the will to live when he refused to eat and lapsed into silence. Construction crews lunched in a little diner two blocks west and across the street from the massive RCA Building in Rockefeller Center.