CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS 



Death Camas, and also as White Camas and Lobelia. 

 It haunts damp meadows and streamsides, and is 

 in botanical parlance Zygadenus venenosus, Wats. 

 The white flowers serve to distinguish it from the 

 blue Camas, which otherwise it strongly simulates. 

 The effect of eating the Zygadenus bulb is a pro- 

 found nausea accompanied by vomiting. Mr. F. V. 

 Coville records a crafty practice of the Klamath 

 medicine men, who would sometimes make a mixture 

 of tobacco, dried iris root and Death Camas, and 

 give it to a person in order to nauseate him. Then 

 they would charge the victim a fee to make him well 

 again ! 



A poison unsuspected by most of us resides in the 

 leaves of that beautiful evergreen shrub, the Ameri- 

 can Laurel or Calico-bush (Kalmia latifolia, L.), 

 which glorifies with its white and pink bloom the 

 spring thickets of the Atlantic seaboard. Man has 

 little occasion to put these leaves in his mouth, but 

 the ill effect upon cattle and sheep has been often 

 reported. A like offender is the Laurel's little red- 

 flowered cousin, the Sheep-Laurel or Lambkill (K. 

 angustifolia, L.). Stock may also suffer fatally 

 from eating the wilted foliage of the Wild Black 

 Cherry (Prunus serotina, a tree already described, 

 with clusters of edible, small, black, somewhat 



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