IS THE KALMIA LATIFOLIA POISONOUS ? 



IS THE KALMIA LATIFOLIA POISONOUS? 



BY T. M. 



* OME years ago, travellers gave us startling accounts of 

 a tree, the very odor of which was death to animated crea- 

 tures. Nothing would grow beneath its immediate shade, 

 and all in its vicinity was seared and blighted. Well, 

 when subsequently Richardson wrote of it, that he had 

 iT^ |t^^*^^^i y^ often sat amongst its branches and smoked his cigar, v<'e 

 seemed to be acting very leniently in giving him and his 

 story over to Munchausen or Gulliver ; and it was not 

 ^^S until the writer himself had the opportunity of, in some 

 i^t~^ respects, imitating Richardson, that he became convinced 

 that the celebrated Upas-tree of Java had been most scandalously libelled. 



Has not our own most beautiful Kalmia latifolia been similarly injured ? Thus 

 I inquired, on reading the following note in Darhrfs Botany of the Southern States: 

 " The leaves of the Kalmias are all poisonous ; nevertheless, some animals, it is 

 said, eat them with impunity, and that, too, to such an extent as to make their flesh 

 poisonous to man, it becoming so impregnated with the poison of the leaves." 

 Now, there seems to me something wonderful in this. My farm hand, one day, 

 accounted to me for the death of one of his hogs, that he was sure it must have 

 eaten a rat that must have tasted some phosphorescent poison I had set for it one 

 day before ; but, I am sure, his untutored brain would never have supposed that 

 the poison had been in the flesh of the rat, instead of his stomach, and perhaps 

 weeks or months before. This is the nearest case to that mentioned by Darby 

 that I ever knew of, and yet, how far off ? 



But Darby only gives it as " it is said," and I am inclined to believe that all 

 any of us know about its poisonous property is on the ipse dixit of some one else 

 — as far back, perhaps, as some original Indian, hundreds of years ago. As far 

 l)ack as I can recollect, I was cautioned not to go near or smell the flowers, and 

 told that the honey the bees extracted from them was poisonous. Had those who 

 so taught me, lived in this region, handled the magnificent bouquets, or, as our 

 children do, worn the rural wreaths they fantastically make of them, their fears 

 would undoubtedly be very alarming. To this day, the English, with all their 

 fondness for it, admit it only in guarded places, not exposed to the incursions of 

 children, and where, like a caged lion, its grandeur may be seen, but its power 

 not be felt. As we know this to be all " nonsense," why may not all the rest be 

 that is said derogatory to it ? 



As to its being poisonous to cattle, I may mention that, in one of ray botanical 

 excursions last year, I came on a wood, in Delaware State, in which were some 

 score of cows. Poor beasts ! — there was little in that wood to satisfy the demands 

 of a hungry appetite, but the wood abounded with laurel, as Pennsylvanians call 

 and not a leaf was to be seen on the i)lants ; they had eaten every vestige of 



YoL. VI.— April, 1856. 



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