STUDIES OF PLANT LIFE 
the Crowfoot family, but possesses none of the acrid and 
poisonous qualities of the Ranunculus proper, being used 
in medicine, as a mild tonic, by the American herb doctors 
in fevers and disorders of the liver. 
It is very probable that its healing virtues in complaints 
of the liver gave rise to its common name in old times; 
some assign the name, “ Liver-leaf,” to the form of the 
lobed leaf. 
BLUE CoHosH, PAPoosE Root—Caulophyllum thalictroides 
(Michx.). 
(PLATE IV.) 
Though bearing the same Indian name, “Cohosh,” our 
plant has been removed by botanists to another family than 
the red and white Baneberries, or Cohoshes, which are 
members of the Ranunculacee or Crowfoot family. There 
is no beauty in the blossoms of the Blue Cohosh, yet the 
plant is remarkable for its medicinal uses, which are well 
known among the Indians and the herbalists of the United 
States medical schools. 
The round, rather large blue berries are not the portion 
of the plant that is used, but the thick-knotted root-stock. 
The leaves are of a dull bluish green, the flowers dark 
purplish green, lurid in color; the leaves are closely folded 
about the thick fleshy stem when they first appear. The 
whole plant impresses one with the conviction that it is 
poisonous in its nature; there is something that looks 
uncanny about it. Nature stamps a warning on many of 
our herbs by unmistakable tokens: the glaring inhar- 
monious coloring of some; the rank odors exhaled by 
others; the acrid, biting taste in the leaves and juices—all 
these are safeguards if we would but heed them as warn- 
Io 
