NATIVE WILD FLOWERS 
The silken beard of the seed, though so bright and beauti- 
ful, is too short and brittle for spinning; still, as a felting 
material, or for paper manufacture, it might prove of value, 
for even the pod might be employed. A good fibre is found 
in all the tall Milkweeds, and also in the Apocynums or 
Dogbanes, where the thread is still finer. All these plants 
are remarkable for the bitter viscid milky juices with which 
they abound. 
We know nothing in medicine experimentally of this 
tribe of native plants, but I believe they are supposed to 
contain poisonous properties of a narcotic nature, as is the 
case with most vegetables containing acrid milky juices.* 
It would add greatly to the value of botanical books if a 
few words as to the poisonous character of native plants 
were inserted. 
WILLOW-HERB—LHpilobium angustifolium (L.). 
This handsome, showy plant, with its tall wand-like 
stem and abundant blossoms of reddish lilac, adorns old 
neglected fallow-lands that have been run over by bush 
fires, and open swampy spots, where it covers the unsightly 
ground with its bright colors and drooping stems, which are 
often borne down by the weight of their blossoms and fair 
buds. It often shares these waste places with the White 
Everlasting (Antennaria margaritacea), Wild Red Rasp- 
berry, Blackberry, and the Fireweed, with a variety of 
smaller plants that take possession of the virgin soil, there 
to perfect their flowers and fruit, while at the same time 
their abundant foliage serves to cover the confusion caused 
by charred and blackened trunks and branches of prostrate 
* It is supposed to cure the bite of a rattlesnake, and it is strange that it always 
grows in abundance where there are rattlesnakes. An old saying that an antidote is 
always near a poison may be true. The milk is also a cure for warts.—A.D.C. 
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