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White snakeroot, a poisonous flower if ingested by animals.![]()
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White snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) blooms from late summer through fall and grows 1 to 3 feet tall in dry and shady areas, such as the edges of deciduous woods. The leaves are opposite, lance-shaped with pointed tips, hairless, and strongly serrated along their margins. This native perennial belongs to the Aster family, which means that many tiny flowers are clustered together in the shape of what appears to be one flower. These composite flowers are usually made of two types of tiny flowers: disk florets and ray florets. Disk florets form the disk-shape center of the flower and ray florets surround the center with their petal-like shape. In the case of white snakeroot, the composite flowers lack ray florets and are made of 20 to 30 disk florets. Each disk floret is tubular, with five pointed lobes, and has, in the middle, a long divided style (stalk of the pistil) that sticks out. The composite flowers look like white fuzzy balls that form several flat clusters of flowers.![]()
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White snakeroot contains toxins that can cause trembles in animals when ingested. The toxins can pass through their milk causing “milk sickness” if the milk is subsequently ingested by humans or calves. This became a great source of fear for early colonist settlers who had no idea about the source of this poisoning and thought it was another transmittable disease. Drinking milk or eating meat from infected animals would cause drastic symptoms and was often a death sentence. Today, milk sickness is very uncommon because of modern farming practices.![]()
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What signs of fall do you see? Visit us for a hike or take a walk around your neighborhood looking for cyclical events influenced by seasonal changes. ![]()
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Photo: Stephanie Briand, Aldo Leopold Nature Center![]()
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#PhenologyFriday #WhiteSnakeroot #WIEnviroEd #NatureIsEverywhere #NatureIsForEveryone #EveryBodyOutside
