What plant kills poachers?

By Chelsie Vandaveer

December 11, 2002

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The dogbanes, Apocynum androsaemifolium and A. cannabinum are misnamed. Linnaeus named the genus after the ancient Greek, apokynon, a plant believed toxic to dogs. Ingested, the dogbanes are certainly poisonous to mammals, but the flowers are fatal to visitors of the wrong type. At the base of the pistil are five nectar producing glands which attract any sweet-loving insect--bees, flies, moths, and butterflies.

A Pair of Dogbane Leaf Beetles Eating a Dogbane Leaf
George Grall
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Charles Millspaugh wrote of the 'dog's bane' flowers in 1898: "[T]he flowers...have a power...of imprisoning insects....upon careful observation it is plainly seen that the capture is entirely accidental, the flower and plant remaining neutral. In consequence of the convergence of the anthers and their adherence to the zone of the stigma, a narrow fissure is formed, very contracted at the apex, the insect in search of honey from the nectaries at the base of the corolla, inserts its proboscis between the short filaments of the stamens, thus when about to leave its feast the proboscis is sometimes caught in this fissure: once fast, the greater the insect struggles the more firmly is it wedged, until its self-deliverance becomes impossible. Thus mosquitoes, gnats and small flies may frequently be found dead in the flower-tubes." (American Medicinal Plants, reprinted 1974)

Neltje Blanchan said of the plant, "The dogbane, which is perfectly adapted to the butterfly, and dependent upon it for help in producing fertile seed, ruthlessly destroys all poachers that are not big or strong enough to jerk away from its vise-like grasp. One often sees small flies and even moths dead and dangling by the tongue from the wicked little charmers....To be killed by slow torture and dangled like a scarecrow simply for pilfering a drop of nectar is surely an execution of justice medieval in its severity." (Wild Flowers -- An Aid to Knowledge of our Wild Flowers and Their Insect Visitors, 1900)

Missouri Plants has several photographs of dogbane including close-ups of the flowers. Note the narrow slots where an insect can catch its proboscis. To view the photographs, click on the link:

Click here to view the photographs

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