Can you identify this strange plant?

April 28, 2007 10:42 AM

Can you identify this strange plant?

We live in South Mississippi, and my father has never seen a plant like this in 50 years. It's growing in an area that used to be forest, but became a field after Katrina, and it's on the edge of the field in a fairly sunny spot. The flower kinda looks like clover, but clover has lobed leaves, not grassy shoots like this plant, so we don't think it's clover.

More pics here and here.

posted by Mr. Gunn to science & nature (4 comments total)

Based on looking at my wildflower identification book, and followed by some Googling, it looks like it could be Amianthium Muscaetoxicum, or Fly Poison. The shape of the flower cluster looks right, and the Fly Poison has grass-like leaves- it's a bit hard to make out the individual flowers in the pictures you put up, but they look like they easily match the Fly Poison's. It is, as the name implies, a fairly toxic plant.
posted by a louis wain cat at 10:59 AM on April 28, 2007

It kind of looks like Black Bugbane - 1, 2 (Cimicifuga racemosa). Not really sure, though. Hopefully a MeFi botanist will have a more definitve answer.
posted by ericb at 11:28 AM on April 28, 2007

BTW -- a good resource for plant indentification is the USDA image gallery in which you can sort by all sorts of attributes.
posted by ericb at 11:29 AM on April 28, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yep, it looks to be Fly Poison. Its distribution in Mississippi is in 6 counties in the southern part of the state.
posted by ericb at 11:38 AM on April 28, 2007