SPERMATOPHYTA— CHENOPODIACEAE 



429 



laciniate pinnatifid; flowers in spikes without bracts, or the lower spikes leafy 

 bracted. 



Distribltion. Naturalized from Europe in waste places, from Massachusetts 

 to Ontario and from Wisconsin to Mexico. 



Poisonous properties. Several species of the genus contain volatile oils. 

 The C. anibrosioides, var. contains the volatile oil of wormseed. This oil has 

 a peculiar, strong, offensive odor and a pungent disagreeable, but aromatic 

 taste. It is said to contain chenopodin, CgH^^NO,. In the case of a man 

 who took about one half an ounce of a soluble oil of wormseed, Dr. Mills- 

 paugh says that the symptoms were those from a narcotic, acrid poison, af- 

 fecting the brain, spinal cord and stomach. The patient was insensible, con- 

 vulsed and foamed at the mouth. In another case a man who had taken a con- 

 siderable quantity displayed hilarity and made futile attempts at talking like a 

 drunken man. Death followed later. C. mexicanum contains saponin. 



2. Sarcobatus Nees. Grease-wood 



An erect, branched shrub with spiny branches; leaves alternate; linear, 

 fleshy ; flowers dioecious or monoecious ; the staminate in terminal clusters with- 

 out a calyx; the pistillate solitary in the axils with compressed calyx, adnata to 

 the base of the papillose stigmas; in fruit a membranous horizontal wing; seed 

 vertical; embryo green, coiled into a flat spiral. Species 1. 



Fig. 206. Grease wood (Sarcobatus Max- 

 imiliana). A plant growing in alkaline soils 

 in the Western United States. Poisonous to 

 sheep. The sharp spines cause mechanical 

 injury. (U. S. Dept. Agrl.) 



