38 



The Journal of Heredity 



ment that the flea beetle consumes about 

 5% of every crop of belladonna grown, 

 in spite of the most liberal use of 

 insecticides and agricultural spraying 

 machinery. 



Henbane, the crude drug from which 

 hyoscyamine is made, sells at about $4 

 a pound on the dry basis, and is worth 

 it, owing to the eagerness with which 

 insects appear to lie in wait for every 

 green shoot as it appears. In the course 

 of the author's experience potatoes 

 were grown in the neighborhood of 

 henbane, in the hope that it would act 

 the part of a decoy crop. Unfor- 

 tunately, however, the potato beetles 

 preferred the henbane, and — if we may 

 be permitted to drop into the vernacular 

 — returned to their own homes only 

 after all the other places were shut up. 



Among the medicinal plants which 

 the author and his associates have at- 

 tempted to grow commercially in Vir- 

 ginia and Maryland, many of them suc- 

 cessfully, are belladonna, digitalis, 

 cannabis, sage, hydrastis, ginseng, stra- 

 monium, monada punctata, pinkroot, 

 valerian, senega, colchicum, etc Of these, 

 the first two have to be propagated in 

 a greenhouse during the winter in or- 

 der that the plants, when set out in the 

 field, will be large and vigorous enough 



to cope with the ravages of insects and 

 crowding out by weeds. The green- 

 house soil has to be especially sterilized 

 to prevent the spread of a special fun- 

 goid root-rot disease to which bella- 

 donna is especially susceptible and 

 which follows the seedlings from the 

 greenhouse to the open fields. During 

 one season the writer lost over 50% of 

 his belladonna crop, due to root-rot. So 

 suddenly did the disease show itself 

 that on one day the bushy plants, about 

 two feet high, were flourishing in the 

 field and the next day were found 

 wilted down and dying. The roots of 

 belladonna are rich in atropine and are 

 usually dug up and sold after a suc- 

 cession of leaf crops have been gath- 

 ered, so that the loss from root-rot is 

 most discouraging and baffling. 



This paper has not attempted to dis- 

 cuss drugs or drug growing in their 

 technical aspects, but merely describes 

 a few of the conditions and difficulties 

 encountered by a group of associates 

 who entered the field with no expecta- 

 tion of making large profits, but with 

 the patriotic purpose of demonstrating, 

 if possible, that American methods were 

 capable of making us independent of 

 central Europe with respect to some 

 very necessary medicinals.* 



^The results obtained during the harvest year of 1918 fully justified the careful work 

 of seed selection that has been carried on during the past years, as the active principles in 

 the various crops mentioned w^ere kept up to the standard aimed at. This result \\ras 

 obtained in spite of the fact that not only was the labor situation during the war year 

 extremely acute, necessitating paying higher wages to inefficient and ignorant labor than 

 v/ere previously paid to expert labor, but also the weather conditions during the summer 

 season of 1918 rendered the handling of special crops very difficult. In the early spring there 

 was a long rainy period which held back plowing and setting of plants, and this was 

 followed by an extensive drought which lasted for twelve weeks, both conditions being 

 unfavorable to agricultural operations. In addition to this, supplementing what has been 

 previously touched upon in the preceding article in regard to the relation between the 

 successful growing of medicinal plants and insect attack, it may be recorded that during 

 August of this year a flight of a peculiar and unusual kind of potato beetle appeared upon 

 the scene and attacked the belladonna, consuming a considerable quantity of the crop 

 before the new insect was recognized and measures put into eff^ect to control it. In 

 addition to the usual medicinal plants, the growing of which has been described in this 

 article, several new crops were produced in a small way, which had not heretofore been 

 successfully grown and marketed in this country. This development work, it is hoped, 

 will be carried on from year to year as opportunity of success seems to promise. 



