WEONGLY SUSPECTED SPECIES. 143 



WILD HYACINTH. 



{Leucocrinum montanum Nutt.) 



A low stemless perennial, with a tuft of rather thick linear leaves, 

 thick tuberous roots, and iJ: to 8 pure white fragrant flowers, with a 

 slender tube 1 to 2 inches long, which rises from below the surface of 

 the ground (PI, XXXIII). The flowers appear in earh^ spring. The 

 plant grows abundantly in dry, gravelly soil in the Yellowstone Vallev. 

 Judith Bas'n, and Gallatin Valley near Belgrade. It is found plenti- 

 fully from Livingston to Big Timber, and especially north of these 

 points to the Musselshell River. Outside of Montana the plant grow- 

 from Montana to Northern California. 



It is supposed in Montana that this plant is poisonous to sheep afte'- 

 the fruit has been developed. No authentic cases have been investi- 

 gated, and since the seed capsules are underground it appears very 

 doubtful if they are ever eaten by stock. The plant blossoms early in 

 May and the leaves dry up generally before the last of Ma3\ The 

 roots consist of semi-fleshy fibers which can not be readil}^ pulled up. 

 Dr. Blankinship, who in 1890 made an investigation of the plants used 

 by the Crows, stated that this tribe of Indians ate the roots. The taste 

 of partiallv dried herbarium specimens is rather agreeable. No defi- 

 nite evidence whatever could be obtained which would connect tnis 

 plant with anj^ case of stock poisoning. 



cow PARSXIP. 



{Heracleum lanatum ]\lichx.) 



A coarse, strong-scented, woolly perennial -i to feet high, with 

 decompound leaves and somewhat heart-shaped leaflets. Flowers 

 white, in large flat-topped clusters. This plant is sometimes called 

 wild parsnip, but may be readily distinguished from that plant by its 

 much greater size and coarser character. It is common in situations 

 similar to that in which the poison hemlock grows. In 1900 it was 

 found in Gallatin, Park. Carbon, Sweet Grass, Meagher, Choteau, Cas- 

 cade, Teton, Flathead, Lewis and Clarke, and Missoula counties. The 

 general distribution of this species is from Colorado to British America 

 and to the Atlantic; also in California. 



The plant was first observed to be well in bloom at Bozeman on 

 June 26, It is especially abundant and luxuriant in level swampy 

 land among willows, but it grows well among shrubbery along creeks 

 everywhere throughout Montana. Fifty grams of the succulent leaty 

 nonflowering tops, collected on June 6, was fed on the same morning 

 to a small yellow rabbit weighing about 1^ pounds. All of this amount 

 was readily eaten with the exception of a small part of a leaf, which 

 finallj' became very badly wilted, and a fragment of a flower cluster 



