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HEATH FAMILY (Ericacea) 

 MOUNTAIN LAUREL (Kalmia latifolia L.) 



COMMON NAMES: The most familiar of the English names are 

 broad-leaved laurel, poison-laurel, sheep-laurel, spoon wood, calico-bush. 



DESCRIPTION: The mountain laurel is one of our most attractive 

 shrubs usually from three to six feet high, but in the Southern States it 

 sometimes attains a height of thirty or forty feet. Its leaves are bright 

 green on both sides, thick, with short stalks, flat and shining, oval, pointed 

 at each end, entire. It has beautiful clusters of showy pink flowers with 

 clammy stalks. The seed-capsule is round, hard, dry, clammy and many- 

 seeded. The plant is in bloom from May to July. 



DISTRIBUTION: This native plant is found on rocky hills, pastures 

 and mountain slopes from New Brunswick to Ontario. 



POISONOUS PROPERTIES: B. S. Barton (1798) says: 



"Nearly allied to the Rhododendron is the genus Kalmia. Of this 

 we have several species, and all of them are poisons. The Kalmia Latifolia, 

 or broad-leaved laurel, is best known to us. It kills sheep and other 

 animals. Our Indians sometimes use a decoction of it to destroy them- 

 selves." 



All parts of the plant except the wood contain the very poisonous 

 constituent andromedotoxin. Many cattle and sheep are poisoned annually 

 by it. Poisoning usually takes place in the spring when the animals, after 

 the dry food of winter, are attracted by its evergreen foliage. Cases of 

 human poisoning have been known from eating the honey from the flowers, 

 or chewing the leaves in mistake for wintergreen. (Chestnut). 



SYMPTOMS: The general symptoms as given by Chesnut for sheep, 

 cows, and goats, are as follows: 



"Persistent nausea, with slight but long-continued vomiting and 

 attempts to vomit, frothing at mouth, grating of teeth, irregular breathing, 

 partial or complete loss of sight and feeling, dizziness, inability to stand, 

 extreme drowsiness, coma and death" * * * "In addition to most 

 of the above effects, there is, in man, severe pain in the head, an increased 

 tendency to perspire, and often a peculiar tingling sensation in the skin 

 throughout the entire body." 



SHEEP LAUREL (Kalmia angustifolia L.) 



COMMON NAMES: Sheep-laurel is also called lambkill, sheep-poison, 

 wicky, kill-kid, calf-kill. 



DESCRIPTION: The sheep laurel differs from the mountain laurel in its 

 lower stature, in its somewhat narrower leaves, which are commonly 



