Oh, Sweet! I have a world-historically deadly plant growing in my yard!

Take my snakeroot, please!

Housekeeping: I’m doing a butt ton of writing right now (who’s ready for a “nature slasher”!?) and the newsletter will appear once a week instead of twice.

Well! Picture me just doing the rounds through my blooming garden before mother’s day, doing some plant inventory. It’s never been more beautiful, as we’re finally seeing the fruits of a bunch of native (and not native, and occasionally non-native invasive—I’m not the smartest!) plants that we’ve planted. I’m using a plant guide, but also a couple plant finding apps when I get lazy. Full disclosure: I can identify pretty much every tree in California by sight but I’m next to useless when it comes to wildflowers.

I’m having a great time IDing salvias and daisies, fleabanes and mallows, and really think that I’m starting to get the hang of this whole “small plant” thing.” But then I get an ID for something that certainly has that wild, not-quite-beautiful-but-definitely-authentic vibe, like the Gary Oldman of flowers. Here, I will show you a picture of it:

It comes up on the app as “White Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima). “Huh, cool and scary name,” I think. “Let me just google th—OH MY GOD.”

From Wikipedia: “Milk sickness, also known as tremetol vomiting or, in animals, as trembles, is a kind of poisoning, characterized by trembling, vomiting, and severe intestinal pain, that affects individuals who ingest milk, other dairy products, or meat from a cow that has fed on white snakeroot plant, which contains the poison tremetol.”

I go on to learn that Milk sickness was one of the most common and deadly diseases of the American frontier, and that an untold numbers of settlers died from it before snakeroot was discovered as its cause by Dr. Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby in the mid-nineteenth century (she was introduced to the plant by a medicine woman of the Shawnee tribe) and that it likely killed Abraham Lincoln’s mother.

Also, Tremetol is not affected by pasteurization. (The presence of Tremetol has basically been eradicated from modern milk, but still! Scary!)

All in my front yard! Just hanging out! Doesn’t grow naturally here (native to the mid-west) so that means some cool dude planted it here! Excellent! The more you know.

Anyway, did some further research, and it appears that you don’t want this plant growing anywhere near children or dogs. I have both. So, as much as it pains me to say, I will be tearing this goddamned Snakeroot up by its roots this afternoon.

Though I’ll lose an entry in “Mitnicke’s ye Olde Flower Guide for Repose and Chillinge”, I think it’s for a good cause…

…Life.