380 PLANTS USED BY INDIANS OF MENDOCINO COUNTY, CAL. 
stems are turgid with a sweet milky juice, in one instance as much as 
18 drops having been forced out of a freshly cut stem ina few minutes, 
A protecting gummy or rubber-like membrane was then formed across 
the cut. This sticky juice is recognized as an excellent healing lotion 
for cuts and sores. It is valued to some extent as a means of killing 
warts, and was formerly used as a convenient lotion to make the pat- 
tern of tattoo marks on the skin, and to hold the soot while being 
pricked into the surface. The juice is irritating to tender-skinned indi- 
viduals, and is generally recognized as poison- 
ous to sheep, the juicy leaves being especially 
tempting when these animals are driven over 
dry valleys in very warm weather. One sheep 
man asserted that he lost 15 or 20 sheep while 
driving a flock a distance of about 70 miles. 
Another individual has been losing sheep near 
Ukiah from it for the past thirty years. Death 
is brought about within a half hour after eating. 
Its poisonous character is so well recognized 
that sheep men are careful to cut the weeds 
down before the sheep are driven over places 
where it is common. 
The Yukis make no use of the plant and re- 
pudiate it as an undesirable and diabolical im- 
portation of the whites; but some other tribes, 
especially the Concows of the Sacramento Valley, 
formerly used it for the purposes given above, 
and also to uv greater or less extent as a source 
of fiber for ropes and string. The use may 
have been learned from the early Spanish  set- 
tlers by whom the plant was more widely dis- 
tributed northward. The Concow name for the 
weed is 4o'-/0 and the Little Lake yo-t0'-la. 
Asclepias mexicana Cav. 
Fic, 76.—Milkweed (Ascle- Chi-wi'-kot’-s@ (Yokia).—A low, wiry milk- 
pias erlocarpa), one-sixth ‘ood hich is very © al we si les j 
natural size. weed, which is very common along roadsides in 
the vicinity of Ukiah. The narrow leaves are 
arranged about the stem in whorls or fascicles. The showy groups of 
purple flowers are very attractive to various insects. 
In the southern portion of the State this plant is well known to be 
poisonous to cows and sheep, but about Ukia it has no such reputation, 
In fact, the Yokia Indians occasionally eat the young blossoms as they 
do clover. To my surprise, the taste was found to be really pleasant, 
being rather sweet and somewhat spicy. Eating the flowers is not, 
however, to be recommended, for the plant belongs to a dangerous 
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