* Papaver somniferum, opium poppy, or garden poppy: P. rhœas, field poppy, red poppy, or corn poppy.—These plants are sometimes self-sown from gardens. Both contain acrid and narcotic poisons, and European literature records the death of various animals from eating their leaves and seed pods.
POISONING BY POPPIES.
The consumption of poppies causes arrest of peristalsis, secretion of foamy saliva, colic, depression, coma, and in severe cases death by stoppage of respiration.
PRUNACEÆ (PLUM FAMILY).
* Prunus caroliniana.—The laurel cherry, or mock orange, is native in the south-eastern quarter of the United States, and is there often cultivated for hedges. The half-withered leaves and the seeds yield prussic acid, and are poisonous when eaten by animals.
Fig. 87.—Black cherry (Prunus serotina), one-third natural size.
* Prunus serotina.—The wild black cherry is a valuable forest tree which ranges throughout the eastern half of the United States. Cattle are killed by eating the partially withered leaves from branches thrown carelessly within their reach or ignorantly offered as food. The leaves of various other wild and cultivated cherries are probably poisonous to cattle in the same way.
VICIACEÆ (PEA FAMILY).
Aragallus lambertii.—The Lambert, or stemless loco weed, is, next to the following species, the best known representative of a large group of closely related plants which are native to the western half of the United States, and are known as loco weeds on account of the peculiar excited condition which they induce in animals that eat of their leaves. Horses and cattle are both affected, but the chief damage is done to horses. After being permitted to graze on any of these plants the animal acquires an unnatural appetite for them, and soon refuses all other kinds of food. It rapidly becomes unmanageable, shows brain symptoms, and finally dies from lack of proper nourishment.