All right Amy Stewart fans, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for – the winner of the autographed copy of Amy Stewart’s Wicked Plants is:

Monica the Garden Faerie! Monica, I’ll be emailing you today to find out where to send your book!

While the drawing itself was random (I had my Memorial Day guest pull a name out of a hat!), I’d asked commenters to tell us about their favorite Wicked Plant, just for fun. Some of the entries were hilarious!

The awesome Susan /Garden-Chick told us about the wicked plants she wishes she owned:

A shrub that releases a mild sedative into the air at 10:30 or so in the evening, making my dinner guests drowsy and encouraging them to go home already.

A mutant strain of hosta that eats snails instead of being eaten by them.

A winter vegetable that uses captive mycorrhizae to spread its essence to any squash, eggplant or brussel sprouts growing nearby, thereby making them taste like chocolate. (Can you tell what my least favorite vegetables are?)

The excellent Jason nominated the Cordyceps genus of Fungi:

But my wickedest is the Cordyceps genus of fungi. They infect insects and control their behavior in order to increase reproductive success. An epic video presentation is found here:

Another great write up can be found in Paul Stamets “Mycelium Running” which details the hi-jacking of an ant. Spores first land upon the ant and grow into the ant’s body infecting the brain. It then commands the ant to climb to the tallest available point. After reaching an appropriate height for sporulating, the ant then bites down, lockjaw-style, securing a proper spot to die. Then the mushroom grows from the ant maximizing the dispersal of it’s spores.

And the adorable Erin/ Impatient Gardener told us about the horrible Manchineel Tree, which Amy discusses in her book:

As for my favorite wicked plant? That’s gotta be the Manchineel Tree, aka the beach apple or death apple. While the fruit is apparently really bad news (although I always wondered WHO these people were who picked up random fruit off the ground and just started eating it), what I love about this tree is that you can’t even stand under it when it rains.

Those who make the mistake of doing so (which I think is rare now that in most places where this beauty grows they are marked with a skull and crossbones or something along those lines) will be treated to a severe case of blisters. It’s tricky too, because they seem to form a really nice canopy: just the kind of place you want to take shelter during a torrential downpour.

Want to get rid of it? Well good luck with that. If you cut down this member of the spurge family and then try to burn it, the smoke can blind you. Oh yeah, this one’s a real lover. Sort of the black widow of trees: woo ‘em in, and strike ‘em hard.

Yeeesh! The rest of the entries were just as good, too.

Thanks to everyone who entered to win, and if you want your very own copy of Wicked Plants, either go to Amazon.com or go to the Eureka Books Website to order your very own autographed copy.