VI 



POISONOUS PLANTS 



OUCH not, taste not " is 

 written against but com- 

 paratively few plants of the 

 United States. Among 

 the four thousand and odd species, 

 either natives, introduced weeds, or 

 garden escapes, growing between 

 Newfoundland, the southern boundary 

 of Virginia, the Atlantic Ocean and 

 the region of the Great Plains, not 

 more than thirty can be asserted posi- 

 tively to contain elements of danger to man or to 

 beast, from either the tasting or handling. 



Small as the list of the condemned is, it is 

 none the less important that it should be made 

 public, and each name stowed away carefully in the 

 memory with the other danger signals of existence. 

 It also seems very strange that these forbidden 

 plants have not been presented as a group, the 

 only satisfactory way to memorize them, in any of 

 the popular botanies. In fact, it was not until 



'57 



