White Snakeroot

Images of undisturbed subjects in their natural environment. All subject types.

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Olympusman
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Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2012 12:31 pm

White Snakeroot

Post by Olympusman »

After looking this one up, the most common property of this plant is its toxicity. I went out and yanked all that I could find.
White Snakeroot.jpg
Michael Reese Much FRMS EMS Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

Scarodactyl
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Re: White Snakeroot

Post by Scarodactyl »

Doesn't seem like much of a threat if you don't raise cattle in your yard, but it was interesting to learn about its history. Neat plant.

MarkSturtevant
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Location: Michigan, U.S.A.
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Re: White Snakeroot

Post by MarkSturtevant »

I was inspired here to look up deadly plants in my area. I'm not sure that we have that one, but we sure do have nightshade, jimsonweed, poison ivy, and so on.

Besides poison ivy the one I really need to watch for is stinging nettle. That one can grow densely along forest trails, and the . slightest . touch . on bare skin - a mere brush of a passing hand - will produce a surprising amount of pain that lasts a good long time.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

Olympusman
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Re: White Snakeroot

Post by Olympusman »

People plant Jimsonweed (Datura) around here as an ornamental ground cover. A few years ago a lady cut me some flowers and seed pods for photography, but the flowers wilted on the drive home. You have to shoot them on the vine. They are quite lovely.

Mike
Michael Reese Much FRMS EMS Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

Chris S.
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Re: White Snakeroot

Post by Chris S. »

On occasions when I see white snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) in the wild, I find it interesting because of its history, including its being the likely cause of death for the mother of an American president. But for snakeroot to kill Nancy Hanks Lincoln, it had to first get eaten in quantity by a cow, its toxin, tremetol, to become concentrated in the cow's milk or meat, and that consumed also in sufficient quantity by poor Nancy Hanks Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln, nine-years old when his mother died, would have heard his mom's malady called "milk sickness," "the trembles," or "the slows." Young Lincoln would also have cared for his mom at her bedside, as her sickness came on and progressed, in their family cabin, through her slow-down of movement, loss of muscle control, and transition to becoming comatose, and eventual death. As Abraham Lincoln bore witness, his unfortunate mother must have transitioned from healthy to dead through an inexorable process of slowing down. For her, "The slows," indeed.

Years later, when Lincoln was president during the American Civil War, he momentously fired the popular commanding general, George McClellan. Lincoln had unsuccessfully prodded McClellan to pursue the war aggressively.

In explaining his decision to a political advisor, Lincoln said of McClellan, “He has got the slows, Mr Blair." In phrasing that conveys far less to a modern reader than it likely meant to Lincoln, this was a terminal diagnosis of the former general's leadership.

So, to pull up all specimens of a plant with such history? Horrors!

--Chris S.

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