PLANTS. 379 



so disgusting, that, although highly poisonous, its bad 

 effects are rarely found necessary to bs combated. Q . 



The Wild or Poison Lettuce Trumpet Milkweed 

 (Lactua virosa), much resembles the L. sativa or Gar- 

 den Lettuce ; lower leaves clasping the stem horizontally, 

 upper arrow-shaped ; flowers yellow, in spreading pani- 

 cles. Grows rankly beside stone walls, and in hedges ; 

 stalk hollow, stout, three to five feet high ; flowers open 

 only in the morning. Whole plant has a most unpleasant 

 odor ; if eaten, tastes acrid and bitter. Its poison pro- 

 duces stupor ; symptoms resembling those produced by 

 hemlock. The same remedies are proper Used medi- 

 cinally as a sedative. O. 



Poison Oak, or Sumach (Rhus radicans). Leaves 

 oval, oblong, abruptly acuminate; blooms in racemous 

 axillary panicles ; flowers, androgynous, divided ; color 

 yellowish-green ; stem sometimes six feet high, according 

 to species, at others climbing thirty to forty feet, by means 

 of radicating tendrils, which fasten themselves on trees, 

 etc.* Every part of this plant contains an acrid resin 

 very poisonous to the taste or touch, even tainting the 

 air to some distance around with its pernicious effluvium, 

 so that in damp weather many persons become poisoned 

 by it merely from passing or by remaining a short time 

 in its neighborhood. In such cases the skin becomes 

 inflamed and covered with an eruption, mostly attended 

 with painful swellings. The best remedies are simple 

 sudorifics, such as decoctions of elderberry flowers and 

 acids, or local applications of dry heat. Cooling washes, 



* The climbing variety, Poison Ivy, is the proper Rhus radicans 

 (the Poison Sumach, called in the United States Rhus vencrata) and 

 the Poison Oak (Rhus toxicodendron) are the erect variety. All are 

 more or less poisonous. Wood. Tr. 



