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There is baneberry, whose very name sufficiently describes its dangerous nature. There are horse-radish, and stinging rocket, and biting wall-pepper, and still smarter water-pepper, and worm-wood, and nightshade, and spurge, and hemlock, and half a dozen other equally unpleasant weeds.
I am also equally curious to know if anything eats the fruit of the red and white baneberry and the blue cohosh. The seeds of some wild fruit, such as the climbing bitter-sweet, are so soft that it seems impossible they should pass through the gizzard of a bird and not be destroyed.
On the rocky slopes the wild ginger shows its red-brown, long-eared urns, the white baneberry its short white plumes, the branchlets of the bladdernut are breaking into white clusters and columbine soon will "sprinkle on the rocks a scarlet rain" as it did in Bayard Taylor's time, although the "scarlet rain," like that of the painted cup in the lowlands, grows less and less each year.
I have inserted the following, as being known to contain the different colours mentioned; but there are many other plants equally productive of this principle that remain quite unnoticed at present. ACANTHUS mollis. BEAR'S-BREECH. This gives a fine yellow, which was in use among the ancients. ACTAEA spicata. BANEBERRY. The juice of the berries affords a deep black, and is fixed with alum.
Prior adds, the name is applied to many plants which have no qualities in common, some of these being the meadow-sweet, fleabane, osmund-fern, herb-impious, everlasting-flower, and baneberry.
In fact, I think it is proper that all the species should be considered as such, and never be made use of, either in medicine or otherwise, without great care in their administration. ACTAEA spicata. BANEBERRY. This plant is also considered as a deadly poison; but we have no authentical accounts of its mischievous effects, although Parkinson has mentioned it in these words:
He called her attention to and brought her samples of ginger leaves, Indian hemp, queen-of-the-meadow, cone-flower, burdock, baneberry, and Indian turnip, as he harvested them in turn. When they came to the large beds of orange pleurisy root the Girl cried out with pleasure. "We will take its prosaic features first," said the Harvester. "It is good medicine and worth handling. Forget that!
On the wooded slopes there are the white fruits of the baneberry on its quaintly-shaped red stalks, the pretty fruit clusters of the moonseed and the smilax. The scattered berries of the green-brier will be black in winter, but their September hue is a bronze green of a delicate shade which artists might envy.