Chino Plant
The chino plant is a thin vine with leaves that resemble ivy and flowers that resemble clematis. Coming in a variety of colours, these plants are both highly-desired produce and common garden weeds; they have great value as an ingredient in potions and medication, but spread at a pace that quickly allows them to overtake any garden bed they take root in.
The plant is known to be related to kudzu, and the speed and intensity in which it grows and covers everything highlights this relationship. Unlike kudzu, however, the vine of the chino plant is poisonous. Though not deadly, its sap causes a stinging sensation when coming into contact with skin, and intestinal discomfort when ingested; this makes it much more difficult to dispose of using animal grazing, cutting, or back-burning methods, as when the plant is damaged it the air around it becomes saturated in this chemical and can cause damage to the eyes and respiratory tract.
Despite the poisonous nature of its sap, the plant is safe to touch when it is left undamaged, and its colourful flowers and leaves have their uses in medications and potions. This makes it a desirable indoor plant potted for alchemists and healers. If kept in the right conditions the plant will remain in bloom all year round, providing an endless supply of ingredients for those who use them.
The flowers of the chino plant can come in any colour, including multi-colour fading gradients or speckle patterns in their petals, and each colour has its own uses in medicine and potions. The most common uses for the plant are as pain-killers, anti-psychotics, and anti-depressants.
The pink-and-blue gradient variety of the flower works as a pain-killer when mixed with sugar and ingested as tea. Tasting similar to lemonade and extremely difficult to overdose on, it is a popular at-home treatment for managing chronic pain.
Meanwhile, the green flowers are used for anti-anxiety medications; the speckled white and grey make a topical treatment for relieving muscle stiffness; purple flowers are part of an extremely successful treatment for the most intense symptoms of schizophrenia; and a mix of the red and the orange flowers together is the base for a medication that helps treat thrush.
The most illustrious (and, arguably, most controversial) medicinal use of the chino plant, however, comes from a discovery made in the early 10,000’s during an outbreak of the self-feeding sickness. When the usual medication for the illness was nearly wiped out, an alternative was discovered. Named after its creator, Prince Ka’harja Nigelle, the chino nigelle potion is made from the vine of the chino plant (any colour flower) mixed with uninfected blood from a donor. Though it is not a common treatment for the nurlak’s self-feeding sickness, due to its difficulty to make and store, it is useful when access to the preferred treatment is limited.
Though the chino plant has many uses in legal medicine, it also has several illegal uses. The most well-known illegal substance made from the plant is chino flore; a liquid poison made from the vine that activates a person’s pain receptors, creating an intense searing burn-like sensation on any body part it touches. This sensation is believed to be one of the most excruciating physical pains that can be experienced, though sadly it is also an extremely accessible poison as, due to the important medicinal uses of the chino flowers, the plant cannot be banned.
A lesser-known drug comes from the only variation of the chino plant that is illegal to possess without a licence; the black flower variation. The black chino flower has very few medicinal uses, though ingesting its petals as a tea has been known to help ease the visions of triggered-state prophets, and so it is kept on a more restricted basis than the other colours. Instead, the black chino flower can be used to make a hallucinogenic drug known as “night dust,” or, less commonly, “midnight petal.” Night dust is popular at parties, but if overused can damage eyesight and cause blindness.