POISONOUS ENGLISH PLANTS.
IN the Year-Book published by that very practical paper, Farm and Home, there is, among a mass of useful infor- mation, a chapter on the poisonous plants of this country. Some thirty names, among them those of whole families which are more or less noxious, appear in the list, besides the fungi which are known to have toxic properties in a high degree. Has the reader ever felt the physical and mental sensations of plant poisoning ? Experto crede. It is most unpleasant and disconcerting to the last degree, even though the dose be not severe. The violent, rapid, and automatic efforts of the swallowing or receptive parts of the body to get rid of the stuff, the doubt whether this will be accomplished, the utter hopelessness of ordinary countervailing remedies, the feeling
of nausea and exhaustion, and the mental conviction of stupidity which must accompany accidents of this kind are not to be forgotten.
Fortunately, many poisonous plants have an evil taste or smell ; but this is not always the case. Children will eat the seeds of laburnum, for instance, as if they were green peas until the poison begins to take effect ; and yew, whether eaten by cattle, or in the form of the seeds by human beings, appears to be pleasant to the respec- tive tastes of one and the other, though the poison some- times acts so quickly that horses drop down dead before the stuff is even partly digested. The only cases of plant poisoning now common among grown-up people are those caused by mistaking fungi for mushrooms, or by making rash experiments in cooking the former, of which Gerard quaintly says : " Beware of licking honey among the thorns, lest the sweetness of the one do not countervail the sharpness and pricking of the other." But with such a list of toxic plants as our flora can show there is always danger from certain species whose properties are quite unknown to ordinary mortals. Are they equally unknown to the herbalists and that mysterious trade-union of countrywomen and col- lectors of herbs by the roadside who deal with them ? Prob- ably the trade in poisons not used for serious purposes, but for what used in some parts of England to be called " giving a dose," a punishment for unfaithful, unkind, or drunken husbands, still exists as it did some forty years ago. The collectors of medicinal plants cut from the roadside
and' rubbish heaps, plants whose " operations " for good are quite well known, and have been handed down by tradition for centuries, cannot be absolutely ignorant of the other side of the picture, the toxic properties which Other plants, or sometimes even' the same plants, contain. Foxglove, for instance, from which digitalis used as a medicine is extracted, is a good example of these kill-or-cure plants. Every portion of the plant is poisonous, leaves, flowers, stalks, and berries. It affects the heart, and though useful in cases in which the pulsations are abnormal, its symptoms when taken by persons in ordinary health are those of heart failure. Thus foxglove is not only a dangerous but a "subtle" poison.
Among other plants which may cause serious mischief, but are seldom suspected, are such harmless-looking flowers as the meadowsweet, herb-paris, the common fool's-parsley, found growing in quantities in the gardens of unlet houses and neglected ground which has been in cultivation, mezereon, columbine, and laburnum. Meadowsweet, whichis here indicted for the first time, so far as the writer knows, among poisonous flowers, has the following set against its name :—" A few years since two young men went from London to one of the Southern counties on a holiday excursion, on the last day`of which they gathered two very large sheds of meadowsweet to bring home with them. These they placed in their bedroom in the village inn where they had to put up. In the course of the night they were taken violently ill, and the doctor who was called in stated that they were suffering from the poisonous prussic-acid fumes of the meadowsweet flowers, which 'he said almost overpowered him when he came into the room. The flowers were at once removed, and the young men, treated with suitable restoratives, were by next morning sufficiently recovered to undertake the journey hoine." Without knowing what the young men had bad for supper, it seems perhaps rather hasty to blame the meadow- sweet. But the other flowers mentioned above have a bad record. To take them in order. Herb-paris, which grows in woods and shady places, with four even-sized leaves in a star at the top of the stem, all growing out opposite each other, bears a large green solitary flower, and a bluish-black berry later. All parts of the plant are poisonous, the berries especially. Fool's-parsley, an unpleasantly smelling, very common plant, which leaves its odour on the hand if the seeds are squeezed or drawn through it, is said to cause numbers of deaths by being mistaken for common parsley and cooked. In the case of poisoning by this plant, it is recommended that milk should be given, the body sponged with vinegar, and mustard poultices put on the sufferer's legs. It is reckoned that one plant produced six thousand and eighty seeds, an unpleasant degree of fecundity for a poisonous weed. Columbine, which is a wild plant with blue or white flowers, as well as a domesticated one, has a toxic principle like that of the monkshood, more especially in the seeds ; and the pretty red berries of the mezereon are responsible for the deaths or illness of children nearly every autumn. They are like cherries, and easily picked from the low bushes on which they grow. A dozen are said to be enough to cause death, though this must probably depend on the state of the eater's health. The laburnum, with its golden rain, is potentially a kind of upas tree. The writer has only known of two deaths of children caused by eating the beans in the green pods, but it is said to be a frequent cause of death every year on the Continent, where, possibly, children are less naturally careful about poisonous plants than those in England, to whom risks of this kind are usually and properly made part of the "black list" of the nursery-book of " Don'ts." The seeds will even poison poultry, if they pick them up after they have dropped from the pod. Laburnum is of comparatively recent introduction into Britain, or it would probably earlier have been accorded a place among the severely poisonous plants, dreaded by all.
Of these the deadly nightshade and hemlock are the best known in story, while the yew is most dangerous because far more common. Green hellebore and monkshood are also classed in the list of the ranker poisons. Deadly nightshade is _rather a rare plant, yet it may be seen often enough on the sides of woods where there are old walls. Several plants were recently recognised growing on a wall by the roadside between Reading and Pangbourne. It is poisonous throughout. The
flowers are large single purple belle, and the berries black and shiny like a black cherry. The author of the chapter referred to at. the beginning of this article says of this dangerous plant that the roots are computed to be five times more poisonous than the berries, that human beings have been found more susceptible to it than animals, and carnivorous animals more so than others. Children suffer more in pro- portion to the quantity of poison taken than do adults. But cases of nightshade poisoning are very rare, though two were reported some three years ago. Possibly the berries often fail to ripen, and so are less attractive in appearance. The poisonous hemlocks are two, one of which, the common hem- lock, is said to have been the plant from which the Athenians prepared their poison for executing citizens condemned to death, and the other, the water-hemlock, or cowbane, is par- ticularly deadly when eaten by cattle, to which it is fatal in a very few hours. Another plant, used for preparing poison in India, which produces a drug used by some tribes of Thugs for procuring the death of their victims, datum or stramonium, has now found a place amongst our wild flowers. It has an English name, thorn-apple, and is said to have been naturalised by the gipsies, who used the seeds as a medicine and narcotic, and carried them about with them in their wanderings. Like henbane, it is often seen on rubbish-heaps and in old brickfields. The leaf is very handsome, and the flower white and trumpet-shaped. Both this plant and the henbane retain their poisonous properties even when dried in hay, and stalled cows have been known to be poisoned by fodder containing a mixture of the latter plant.
Cattle have a delicate sense of smell which warns them of the danger of most poisonous English herbs, though apparently this warning _odour is absent from the plants which kill so many horses when the grass grows on the South African veld, and also from our English yew. Yew was anciently employed as a poison in Europe, much as is the curari to-day in Central America. Dr. W. T. Fernie, the author of " Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Use," says that its juice is a rapidly fatal poison, that it was used for.poisoning arrows, and that the symptoms correspond in a very remarkable way with those which follow the bites of venomous snakes. It is believed that in India there is a poison which produces the same effect. An Indian Rajah once desired that a notice should be put in a well-known paper that he did not intend to raise his rents on his accession to the estates. The proprietor of the paper asked him his reasons for wishing for such an advertisement. The Rajah said that his grandfather bad raised the rents, and had died of snake-bite ; that his father had done the same, and had also died of snake-bite ; and that he concluded that there was some connection of cause and effect. The notice was inserted, and this Rajah did not die of snake-bite, or rather of the poison which simulates it.
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