248 WESTERN GRAZING GROUNDS AND FOREST RANGES 



leaves of the choke cherry (Prunus demissa), yet when 

 driven over hard trails where feed was scarce and then 

 through thickets of that shrub they have eaten the 

 leaves greedily and died in great numbers. 



Herders Should Be Posted. It would therefore seem 

 that every herder in charge of stock and especially 

 sheep should be posted as to the different poisonous or 

 dangerous plants with a view to avoiding as much as 

 possible such accidents. There are but a few really 

 dangerous plants and if herders knew them by sight 

 much loss could be avoided. 



Some plants seem to be more dangerous after heavy 

 rains or dews than at other times. This may be ascrib- 

 able to the fact that the ground is soft and the animals 

 in pulling at the stalks pull up the roots also. It has 

 heretofore been accepted as a fact that the root of the 

 low or purple larkspur contains the poisonous prop- 

 erty, but careful experiments have proved this an error, 

 for the roots have been fed to cattle in both large and 

 small quantities without any injurious effect whatever. 



It is also a very difficult matter to pull up the roots 

 even when the ground is soft so difficult, in fact, that no 

 steer could possibly obtain much of it. Others like the 

 lupines seem to be perfectly safe when the plant is young 

 and only dangerous when ripe. On the other hand, sev- 

 eral varieties, the larkspur and the camas seem to be 

 harmless, or possibly unpalatable and are not eaten by 

 the animals, after they have reached more or less full 

 growth. 



On these ranges the matter can be handled by simply 

 keeping the stock off the poisonous areas until the 

 danger is past. This cannot always be done with cattle 

 and horses but may be done with sheep. 



