Sometimes a plant’s name can be as beautiful as the flower itself. And sometimes a beautiful plant and flower gets stuck with a not-so-pretty common name.
Take, for instance, the lovely pink and purple blooms and gorgeous leaf shape of the not-so pretty-sounding liverwort (Hepatica spp.). Lousewort (Pedicularis canadensis), sneezeweeds (Helenium spp.) and skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) are three more that come to mind.
All of those flowers are beautiful, but you wouldn’t know it from hearing their names. Were I to send you on a hunt for a plant that’s named, oh, I don’t know, fly poison, would you expect to come upon a stunning candle-like cluster of perfect white flowers that fade slowly to light green?
How can something so beautiful have a name so ugly as ‘fly poison?’ Even its species name of Amianthium muscitoxicum is a mouthful that still references death to those pesky flying pests. The epithet “muscitoxicum” translates from Latin to mean “kills flies.” And it does. This plant called fly poison was used to make a deadly trap for flies and other pesky critters.
While it is not a carnivorous plant that captures and eats the flies itself, like a pitcher plant (Sarracenia spp.) or sundew (Drosera spp.), the roots of fly poison were crushed and combined with sugar to make an attractive and effective paste that would lure flies to their doom.
A first glance at this beautiful plant would never give away such a sinister potential. It turns out that fly poison is toxic to humans and can be fatal if ingested, even a little bit. So please don’t.
And be careful with this plant around livestock and pets, as it can cause symptoms that lead an animal to becoming clumsy and have trouble breathing. This could lead to death of the animal, so please be aware. These symptoms in livestock, combined with the plants’ blade-like leaves, leads to the not-so-common name of stagger-grass.
Now that we have its dangers and risks out of the way, we can go back to celebrating the pure beauty that is fly poison. And it is beautiful. Blooming in early summer, these dense flower heads can stand about a foot-and-a-half tall, above leaves that look like a clump of grass.
Grasses do not have showy flowers like fly poison does, however. Like most flowers borne in a spike or raceme, their blooms open from the bottom up. Preferring to be cross-pollinated, they are hoping to get some pollen from another individual of the same species, enhancing and strengthening the genetics of the resulting seed. Eventually, all of the flowers will be open and receptive. Even so, this is not self-fertile and requires cross pollination.
Once the individual flowers have been pollinated, they begin to turn green, sometimes expressing a purple tinge. This acts in part as a signal to the pollinating insects that there is no more nectar and to spend their energy elsewhere. It also makes the fully blooming raceme even more beautiful with the gradual color change spreading from the bottom up, over the length to the bloom time.
Fly poison lives alone in its genus, as there is only one species with the genus name Amianthium. The botanical term for this is monotypic, meaning “one type.” But it does not live alone in the woods, sometimes forming large stands mixed in with sedges, grasses and other herbaceous plants under a canopy of mixed hardwood trees.
Look for fly poison blooming now on moist slopes in the shade of the tree canopy. Sit for a while and see the numerous beetles that climb the stalk to pollinate the flower. But do not under any circumstances feed this plant to the flies. Or to each other, for that matter.
(The Joyful Botanist leads weekly wildflower walks most Fridays and offers consultations and private group tours through Bigelow’s Botanical Excursions. bigelownc@gmail.com.)