NOT WANTED HERE

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 97, 21 October 1932, Page 6

NOT WANTED HERE

A DANGEROUS WEED

A suggestion has been made by a resident of Mitchelltown that if unemployed, workers are again to bo eraployed in gorse and weed grubbing some work of real value awaits them, particularly in the Mitehelltown and Aro street area, in the eradication of hemlock, to the dangerous qualities of which attention was drawn recently. Though hemlock is a common enough weed on vacant sections and rough land about the city, many people do not know it for the virulently poisonous plant it is, but fortunately the mousey" smell of the foliage'is unpleasant enough to warn children against playing with it ana eating leaves or seeds. Still, accidents have happened, and some years ago a child was poisoned fatally in Wellington through eating the seeds, which at eertam periods of growth are very deadly. The plant's nickname, "fool's parsley, gives a good idea of its appearance. It grows to three or four feet high, the leaves are a dark greyish green; the stems are splotched with purplish patches, and the white flowers, and later the seeds, are massed in umbels three or more inches across. The particular alkaloid poison contained in foliage and seeds is of value in medicine, but that should not deter one from giving the plant tho particular I treatment it requires in Wellington— destruction.