POISONOUS PLANTS 167 



"Once there was a woman, very beautiful, tall, 

 slender and bending. She had a lovely color in her 

 face and wild eyes that shot fire and were gray 

 and green and golden at one time. Her robes 

 wreathed about her and were more beautifully gar- 

 nished than the Spring fields. But she was false! 

 Then for her punishment she was turned into a 

 vine, wearing in its season the colors that her eyes 

 had flashed, a vine so beautiful that all men 

 desire to possess it, but deadly to the touch. 

 Though some are of such strength and good 

 blood that they at first may handle it, yet they 

 know not when their hour of trouble may come! " 



Of the other two Sumacs, the Poison Oak, or 

 California Poison Sumac, occupies the same place 

 in the west as the Poison Ivy does in the eastern 

 part of the country. Its leaves are thicker and 

 more rounded, but its manner of poisoning as well 

 as the remedies for it are the same. The third, 

 the Poison Sumac, though not having found its 

 way as far west and not generally as common as the 

 Poison Ivy, is doubly dangerous because it is less 

 known and its poison is even more intense, often 

 producing the symptoms of erysipelas. This plant, 

 locally known as Poison Elder, Poison Ash or Poison 



