POISON IN FLOWERS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 7 November 1924, Page 7

POISON IN FLOWERS.

SEVERAL PLANTS CONDEMNED. TRUMPET FLOWER^INDICTED. SYDNEY, Oct. 9. There .are, it seems, among the flowers that bloom in the spring those that carry with them the lurking dang, er -of poison. A recent discussion on the point at the Linriean Society in Sydney has provoked an interesting corrCsporideriee through the columit s of the press. An employee in the Botanic Gardens had been rendered temporarily blind by cojriirig iff contact with the sap front a broken branch of the plarit known commonly as the trumpet flovfer, ri'hich produces large trumpetshaped flhwers of a creamy-white chlor. It is stated that there was a danger of ajiyorie. eomirig in contact being rendered pefn(aiiehtly blind. One of the speakers that the Government had determined to pro.: hibit the planting of Iceland poppies, because the flowers poisoned bees. It was. stated that the honey produced from azaleas .was poisonous Next the white oleander, was brought before the grave arid sedate Linriean jury. Its sap tras declared irijufioris, not only to bees, but also to animals, and human beings,. - Trie trurripet . flower, frhich had been teiriporarily forgotten, was then called up for sentence. It was declared an undesireable alien that should be dbg out arid hurried, as it was impossible to serid it hack to its native habitat, the West Indies: The poor trumpet flower was just about to hang its head, feeling that all the wrirld was against it. whhri a doctor: rushed into print, protesting against the advice to dig it up and burn it, arid questioning the fact that it had ever produced blindness, even teiriporarily. The doctor savs however that he had had the properties of the plarit analysed by chemists, with intevertihg results.. The chemists extracted a.ri, alkaloid which has similar properties to those of atropine—the alkaloid of belladonna—and duboisine droris, the doctor says, which are used dady by ophthaliuic surgeonc ternpoyarily tri analyse the accommodation of the eye, but. which do not cause blindness, eveii Temporarily, much less nermanentlv. Thus the frufnret flower has snatched a fresh lease of life from the Linnean despots.