312 Minnesota Plant Life. 



poisoning are the acetates of lead or zinc, made into concen- 

 trated solutions and applied with a cloth or sponge as a wash 

 for the affected parts. Salol is also a specific. 



The ordinary innocuous sumacs are, from their brilliant 

 autumnal tints, very beautiful shrubs of the Minnesota copses 

 and hillsides. The poisonous varieties do not show the rich 

 hues of their harmless relatives. 



Hollies. One sort of holly bush is not uncommon in the 

 state. It is a shrub, usually six to twelve feet in height in Min- 

 nesota, with leaves shaped like plum leaves, but rather thick, 

 dark green and smooth above, turning black in autumn. Hence 

 the bush is sometimes called black alder. In late autumn, clus- 

 ters of red stone-fruits, spherical in shape, are found at the bases 

 of the leaves. The flowers are of two sorts, staminate flowers 

 devoid of pistils and perfect flowers with both stamens and pis- 

 tils. The Minnesota variety of holly has not the spiny leaves 

 of the Christmas holly, but its stone-fruits are of the same 

 brilliant red, though rather smaller. Another kind of holly, 

 the mountain holly, with grooved stone-fruits or capsules and 

 smaller smooth-margined leaves, occurs in the southeastern part 

 of the state. The deep longitudinal grooves in the fruit serve 

 to distinguish it from the swamp holly. Hollies and poison- 

 elders very commonly grow close together among the trees of 

 tamarack swamps, and those gathering holly berries in the au- 

 tumn will do well to observe any suspicious elder-leafed shrubs 

 that are near by, and avoid them. 



Climbing bittersweets and wahoos. One species of bitter- 

 sweet and two wahoos represent their family in Minnesota. 

 The bittersweet is a twining vine, often climbing up the trunks 

 of small trees in the woods and displaying its stem along their 

 branches twenty feet or more from the ground. The leaves 

 are alternate and shaped somewhat like plum leaves. The flow- 

 ers are produced in racemes and mature their fruits as orange- 

 colored, spherical capsules, half an inch or less in diameter. 

 These fruits split open by three clefts in autumn and show a 

 red, pulpy structure inside. 



The wahoo or spindle-tree, sometimes known also as burn- 

 ing-bush, is a shrub from six to twelve feet in height in Min- 

 nesota. The leaves are plum-shaped, the flowers are purple, 



