CERTAIN POISONOUS PLANTS 



Pea family, and is a very large one, widely dis- 

 tributed. There are nearly two hundred American 

 species, mostly western herbaceous plants with odd- 

 pinnate leaves, spikes or racemes of 'usually small, 

 narrow flowers generally produced from the leaf- 

 axils, the seed pods mostly bladdery or swollen. 

 These, when dry, have a habit of rustling noticeably 

 in a passing breeze, whence another common name, 

 Eattleweed. Astragalus is often abundant where 

 horses and cattle graze, and certain species have been 

 found to create serious trouble with animals that eat 

 the herbage. They become afflicted with a sort of 

 insanity, or as the Westerners say, they are 

 ' l locoed, ' ' 3 the victims of a slow poisoning. The 

 eyesight grows defective, the movements are spas- 

 modic and irrational, then sluggish and feeble, the 

 coat becomes disheveled and dull of color, emacia- 

 tion sets in, and finally after a few months or it may 

 be a year or two, death comes. It was at one time 

 thought that the poisoning was not of the plant itself 

 but due to the presence of the metal barium which 

 the plant drew into its system from the soil, but this 

 theory is now abandoned. 



A dangerously poisonous weed is the Jimson or 

 Thorn-apple (Datura Stramonium, L.), whose large 



3 Spanish loco, crazy, foolish. 



247 



