Poisonous Plants and Vines 
Poisonous Plants and Vines 
The Poisonous Pokeweed and the Celandine 
Wayside Weeds to Avoid 
BY ANNIE OAKES HUNTINGTON 
I T is interesting to find how many of the familiar weeds which we 
see growing commonly along country roadsides contain poison, 
and yield various poisonous principles used in medicine. Many 
of them are unattractive in appearance, rank in growth, ill-smelling, 
and coarse, but others, although hastily scorned as being mere 
weeds, possess flowers and fruits singularly beautiful in form and 
color, if we stop a moment to look at them critically. Take, for 
example, the pokeweed, garget, or pigeon-berry, Phytolacca de- 
candra, as it is sometimes called. At first sight it seems an unin¬ 
teresting wayside weed, with insignificant, greenish-white flowers; 
smooth, stout, rank-growing stems; and large, strongly scented 
leaves; but when September comes, and the clusters of smooth, 
green berries change to a shining, black-hued purple, which hang 
in long, pendulous racemes among the leaves, the plant becomes 
transformed, and our former indifference is at once changed to 
admiration. At this season of the year it no longer seems strange 
that in Europe the pokeweed is cultivated as an ornamental garden 
plant, much prized for its beauty. 
The generic name of the plant, phytolacca, refers to its decorative 
fruit. It is a hybrid name, from a Greek word phytos, meaning 
plant, and the French, lac, or lake, in reference to the crimson-lake 
color of the juice of the berries. Our own English name for the 
plant, poke, is supposed to have come originally from the American 
Indian word pocan, which was given to any plant yielding a red, or 
yellow dye. 
The root of the plant is large, fleshy, and actively poisonous, 
and is employed with the berries, which are also poisonous, for 
various diseases of the skin and blood. The toxic principle 
phytolaccine is a violent, but slow acting emetic, and in over-doses 
death is apparently due to paralysis of the respiratory organs. A 
case is recorded in which a woman died from eating a double 
handful of the berries and children should not be allowed to eat the 
fruit, which invariably attracts them by its bright, black clusters 
shining in the sunlight. In the spring the young shoots are 
well known and liked as a substitute for asparagus, but in 
preparing them for food all portions of the root should be care¬ 
fully rejected. 
The water in which the shoots are first boiled should also be 
carefully drawn off and changed, on account of its poisonous 
character. 
The celandine, Chelidoniurn majus, is perhaps more generally 
known by sight than by name, for although one seldom hears them 
spoken of, the little frail, yellow flowers spring up in waste places, 
along roadsides, and on the borders of woods everywhere, through¬ 
out the Eastern States. The celandine is a somewhat weak, hairy 
plant, from one to two feet high, with thin leaves, so deeply divided 
that the lobes are almost separate leaflets, and in color a lively 
green above, and a bluish green beneath. The clear, golden yel¬ 
low flowers are composed of four rounded, delicate petals and are 
borne on long, hairy footstalks from the axils of the leaves. It is a 
plant of but one genus, found in Europe and Asia, and it has be¬ 
come naturalized in the United States. 
The celandine contains two poisonous, alkaline principles, 
known as chelidonine and chelerythrine. The whole plant is very 
brittle and exudes, when broken, an orange-colored, fetid juice, 
which is intensely bitter to the taste, and a violent, acrid poison. 
When applied externally it produces inflammation of the skin, and 
to this stimulating character may be attributed its long held reputa¬ 
tion as a popular remedy for destroying warts. The method of 
applying it, is simply to break the stalk, and to touch the part 
affected with the yellow juice. 
A curious and very old belief existed that it was the habit of the 
female sparrow to use celandine to restore the sight to the eyes 
of her young. The generic name of the plant comes from the 
Greek word for a swallow, and was undoubtedly given to the cel¬ 
andine because the flowers bloom when the sparrow comes in 
spring; but Gerarde, one of the old English botanists, says, that it 
was not given “ because it first springeth at the coming in of the 
swallowes, or dieth when they go away, for as we have saide, it may 
he founde all the yeare, but because some holde opinion that with 
this herbe the dams restore sight to their young ones, when their 
eies be put out.” The belief originated with Aristotle, and was 
afterwards maintained by Pliny, Dodoens, Albert le Grand, Macer 
and other ancient botanical writers. 
“There is a Flower, the lesser Celandine, 
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain; 
And, the first moment that the sun may shine, 
Bright as the sun himself, ’tis out again.” 
This verse, from one of Wordsworth’s three poems in honor of 
the celandine, does not refer to the flower here described, but the 
lesser celandine, Ranunculus ficaria, a European member of the 
crowfoot family, wholly different in character, and found only in 
the United States, where it has escaped from gardens. 
THE CELANDINE 
61 
