382 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



THE MOLE-PLANT.— Euphorbia Lathyris* 



The horticultural community was interested last spring in the 

 announcement of Samuel Wilson, of Mechanicsville, Penn., that he 

 had a plant which will drive moles from the garden. This plant, 

 although said to be biennial, was called the Mole-Tree, and the account 

 was verified by the picture, which shows a diminutive tree beneath 

 which lies the corpse of a mole. Nothing is said by the introducer 

 about the origin, nativity or botanical affinities of the plant. We 

 were able to secure but one plant of the Mole-Tree, and we were so 

 choice of it that it has been grown in the greeuhouf^e. It turns out 

 to be an interesting old garden plant, which has a continuous history 

 of at least three hundred years, and which was known as a medici- 

 nal plant to Galen in the second century. It is the Caper Spurge, 

 Euphorbia Lathyris. The name Spurge is applied to many related 

 plants, in reference to their purgative qualities, and this particular 

 species is called Caper Spurge from the fact that the little seed-like 

 fruits are sometimes used as a substitute for capers. The plant is 

 known chiefly as a household medicine, although it is used in materia 

 medica and is figured by Millspaugh in his recent work upon Ameri- 

 can Medicinal Plants. Its use as a food plant seems, fortunately, to 

 have ceased. Johnson, in Sowerby's Useful Plants of Great Britain, 

 1862, speaks of this use of it as follows: "The three-celled capsules 

 are about the size of a large caper, and are often used as a substitute 

 for that condiment, but are extremely acrid, and not fit to eat till they 

 have been long macerated in salt and water and afterwards in vine- 

 gar ; indeed it may be doubted whether they are wholesome even in 

 that state." 



Ihis jjlant is a native of Europe, but it has long been an inhabitant 

 of old gardens in this country, and it has run wild in some of the 

 eastern states. Its use as a mole repeller is not recent. Pursh, in 

 writing of the plant in 1814, in his Flora of North America, says that 

 " It is generally known in America by the name of Mole-plant, it 

 being supposed that no moles disturb the ground where this plant 

 grows." Darlington makes a similar statement in Flora Cestrica, 

 1837 : "Tliis foreigner has become naturalized about many gardens, — 

 having been introduced under a notion that it protected them from the 

 incursions of moles." In later botanies it is frequently called Mole- 

 plant. I do not know if there is any foundation for these repeated 



* Ewphorbia Lathyris, Linnaeus, Sp. PI. 655 (1753). 



