52 



CELANDINE {Chelidonium majus L.) Poppy Family. 

 Plate XXI. 



Common Names: This species is sometimes called the greater 

 celandine to distinguish it from the lesser celandine common in the Old 

 Country. It is also known as the wart-flower, devirs-milk, and swallow- 

 wort. 



Description: The celandine is a biennial or perennial herb with 

 deeply-lobed leaves, one to two feet high, so named from an ancient Greek 

 word meaning swallow, because its flowers appear with the coming of the 

 swallows. The whole plant is somewhat brittle, and a saffron-coloured 

 juice oozes out wherever it is broken. The flowers are rather small, bright 

 yellow; sepals two, hairy, falling when the flower expands as is usual in the 

 poppy family; petals four, stamens sixteen to twenty-four. The number 

 two and its multiples is another characteristic of this group of plants. 

 The seed pods are long and narrow, opening from the bottom upwards. 

 Ripe seed pods are often seen with the flowers, as the plant continues 

 blooming from May to September. 



Distribution: It has been naturalized from Europe and is found 

 in rich, damp soil about towns, chiefly in Ontario. 



Poisonous Properties: — In reference to the greater celandine, H. C. 

 Long says: ''This common plant exhales an unpleasant odour, and when 

 bruised or broken shows the presence of a yellowish acrid juice, which 

 becomes red immediately on exposure to the air. It is an old medicinal 

 drug plant, but is dangerous, being emetic and purgative, with a strongly 

 irritating effect on the digestive tract. Animals are but rarely likely to 

 take it, and no record of the death of domesticated animals has been 

 found." The plant contains the bitter alkaloids chelidonine, chelerythrine, 

 and protopine. 



Symptoms; The action of this plant is acrid, irritant and narcotic, 

 emetic and purgative. Esser remarks that when chelerythrine is intro- 

 duced on the nasal mucous . membrane, it causes violent sneezing, and 

 taken internally causes vomiting. 



