The juice of Arum triphyllum, our Indian Turnip, has been used, boiled in milk, as a remedy for consumption.
Portland sago is prepared from the larger species, Arum maculatum, Spotted Arum. The corm, or root, yields a fine, white, starchy powder, similar to Arrow-root, and is prepared much in the same way as potato starch. The pulp, after being ground or pounded, is thrown into clean water and stirred; the water, after settling, is poured off, and the white sediment is again submitted to the same process until it becomes quite pure, and is then dried. A pound of this starch may be made from a peck of the roots. The roots should be dried in sand before using. Thus purified and divested of its poisonous qualities, the powder so procured becomes a pleasant and valuable article of food, and is sold under the name of Portland Sago, or Portland Arrow-root.
When deprived of the poisonous acrid juices that pervade them, all our known species may be rendered valuable both as food and medicine; but they should not be employed without care and experience. The writer remembers, not many years ago, several children being poisoned by the leaves of Arum triphyllum being gathered and eaten as greens, in one of the early-settled back townships of Western Canada. The same deplorable accident happened by ignorant persons gathering the leaves of the Mandrake or May Apple (Podophyllum pellatum).
There seems in the vegetable world, as well as in the moral, two opposite principles, the good and the evil. The gracious God has given to man the power, by the cultivation of his intellect, to elicit the good and useful, separating it from the vile and injurious, thus turning that into a blessing which would otherwise be a curse.
“The Arum family possess many valuable medicinal qualities,” says Dr. Charles Lee, in his valuable work on the medicinal plants of North America, “but would nevertheless become dangerous poisons in the hands of ignorant persons.”
The useful Cassava, (Zanipha Manipor), of the West Indies and tropical America, is another remarkable instance of art overcoming nature, and obtaining a positive good from that which in its natural state is evil. The Cassava, from the flour of which the bread made by the natives is manufactured, being the starchy parts of a poisonous plant of the Euphorbia family, the milky juice of which is highly acrid and poisonous. The pleasant and useful article sold in the shops under the name of tapioca is also made from the Cassava root.
Nat. Ord. Compositæ.
CONE FLOWER.
Rudbeckia fulgida.
