MUENSCHER'S POISONOUS PLANT GARDEN Traditional Cache
Sapience Trek: Archived per request of the college, due to the structure it is on moving.
MUENSCHER'S POISONOUS PLANT GARDEN
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A micro at a unique Cornell resource we learned about when investigating whether it was safe for sheep to graze on local goldenrod (Answer: yes).
This cache will lead you to a specialty garden on the Cornell campus - The Muenscher Poisonous Plants Garden. This is a trickier and better hide than the one I previously had here. I had originally intended to unarchive that one, but instead this ended up being a new cache published for Vanelle's 11-11-11 event.
This garden was designed to provide veterinarian students and other interested visitors with a living reference collection of "natural toxicants." This garden showcases plants that are poisonous to livestock and pets; many are toxic to people as well. Featured plants include white snakeroot, larkspurs, poison ivy, jimsonweed, pokeweed, and purple foxglove.
Public interest in identifying poisonous plants rose sharply in the mid-19th century as farmers and ranchers moved west, where their livestock grazed on many unfamiliar plants, some of which were poisonous. In response, the newly formed U.S. Department of Agriculture was assigned responsibility for addressing this economically significant problem by identifying potentially poisonous forage. Walter Conrad Muenscher, a professor of botany at Cornell from 1916-1954, saw the need to develop a course that would offer this new information to Cornell veterinary students. During the 1930s, Muenscher developed this garden as a teaching collection for his students.
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