POISONOUS PLANT

Taranaki Daily News, 9 June 1931, Page 7

POISONOUS PLANT

CAUSE OF SKIN TROUBLE.

FOUR.CASES IN AUCKLAND.

Four cases of skin poisoning in Auckland have been traced to a very popular garden shrub, humea elegans, commonly known as the incense plant. One typical case was that of a woman who is very fond of the plant. She had been ill for a long time, but mot knowing the cause used still to smell the incense plant whenever she was well enough to leave her room. Three or four hours afterwards a fever invariably followed, and thus the identification, of the plant as the origin of the trouble was established. The . doctor treated three other cases in which the symptoms were the same, a bloated and mattery condition of'the face and hands, repulsive to see, and unbearable pain in the swollen parts. The plant which has caused the trouble in Auckland is a native of New South Wales and Victoria, but is now very common in Auckland, says the Star. It is a robust, erect biennial, five to seven feet high, and strongly scented. The flower heads are very numerous, in a large, loose panicle, with gracefully pendulous branches., The flowers are cop-per-coloured. It belongs to the daisy family and is included in a genus of four species all restricted to Australia. At the museum no other recorded cases of skin trouble caused by this plant can be found, and it appears that only those with very sensitive skins are affected. The toxic property of the plant has been called coumarin, and- has the chemical formula C9H602. It has a pleasant aromatic odour and is very soluble in alcohol. This property is made use of by the German winemakers, who steep the woodruff (asperula odorata), a plant which also contains coumarin, in white wine, to which it imparts the pleasant odour of the drug. The product is then known as Maiwein. Other plants containing caumarin are used in the manufacture of scents. Although coumarin has been isolated, in a wide range of plants, only a few of these have “been directly responsible for the illness or death of live stock, as in most forms it is entirely inert. The sweet clover of Europe, however, has been suspected of poisoning animals, causing a paralysis of the muscles. In large doses coumarin causes nausea, vertigo, vomiting, and distressin" cardiac symptoms. This is marked in° the vanilla plant (trilisia odoratissima),- the leaves of which are used as an adulterant of tobacco in Virginia, Georgia and Florida. Because of it, cigarette smoking there has become a national menace, the smokers becoming addicts of this narcotic poison.