io8 WEEDS OF FARM LAND 



(Fig. 32). This plant is local, but very abundant when it 

 occurs, and is one of the most poisonous of our British farm 

 weeds, numerous cases of loss of stock having been traced to 

 it. In Switzerland l cases of poisoning of household animals 

 and human beings are recorded every year. Horses are 

 poisoned by the green plant or by dried leaves in hay. Cattle 

 usually avoid it in any form, though young animals are fre- 

 quently poisoned. Poisoning often occurs in the spring when 

 beasts fed in the stall during the winter are let out on the 

 young grass. Pigs are affected, but sheep and goats seem to 

 be more or less immune. The flowers appear alone in the 

 autumn, no leaves being then produced, and the seed vessel 

 remains below the soil. After the flowers die down no more 

 is seen of the plant till the following spring, when leaves ap- 

 pear and the seed vessel rises out of the ground. Every part 

 of the plant is poisonous, corm, leaves, flowers, and seeds, so 

 that danger to stock occurs both in autumn and spring. Oc- 

 casionally, if the spring is late, the leaves may appear in hay 

 and so cause trouble, but generally it is grazing stock that are 

 liable to be affected. Grazing is safe enough in the summer 

 and winter while the plant is resting, but during the spring 

 and autumn stock should be rigidly excluded from fields con- 

 taining the weed. The toxic principle, colchicine, is not 

 volatile and is not removed by drying the plants, so that the 

 leaves are as harmful in hay as when fresh, and as the poison 

 seems to be cumulative repeated small doses may eventually 

 cause poisoning. 2 Warm milk has been recommended as an 

 antidote. With perseverance meadow saffron can be easily 

 eradicated ; seeding may be prevented by dragging a crossbeam 

 with bundles of brushwood and bushes attached, over the 

 meadow when the plants are flowering, thus destroying the 

 blossoms, 3 while the corms can be weakened and starved out 

 by cutting and handpulling the leaves in spring. A special 

 digging iron for the destruction of the corms has also been 

 employed. 



Purging flax (Linum catharttcum) (Fig. 33). This is 

 regarded as a suspected plant only by Long, but it has often 

 been known to occur in meadows or in hay which has caused 



1 Stebler and Schroeter, Matten und Weidcn der Schweiz, IX, p. 209, 

 Summ. in Jour. Bd. Agrlc. (1908), XV, p. 303. 



2 (1908), " Meadow Saffron," Jour. Bd. Agrlc., XV, pp. 44-45. 



3 (a) Illustrierte Landwirtschaftliche Zeitung, No. 27 (1912), (6) Bornemann, 

 " Die wichtigsten landwirtschaftlichen Unkrauter," p. 68 (see Jour. Bd. Agric. 

 (1913), XIX, p. 852). 



