SHEEPLAUREL, LAMBKILL, WICKY, CALFKILL, SHEEPPOISON

NARROW-LEAVED LAUREL (K. angustifolia), and so on through a list

of folk names testifying chiefly to the plant's wickedness in the

pasture, may be especially deadly food for cattle, but it

certainly is a feast to the eyes. However much we may admire the

small, deep crimson-pink flowers that we find in June and July in

moist fields or swampy ground or on the hillsides, few of us will

agree with Thoreau, who claimed that it is "handsomer than the

mountain laurel." The low shrub may be only six inches high, or

it may attain three feet. The narrow evergreen leaves, pale on

the underside, have a tendency to form groups of threes, standing

upright when newly put forth, but bent downward with the weight

of age. A peculiarity of the plant is that clusters of leaves

usually terminate the woody stem, for the flowers grow in whorls

or in clusters at the side of it below.



The PALE or SWAMP LAUREL (K. glauca), found in cool bogs from

Newfoundland to New Jersey and Michigan, and westward to the

Pacific Coast, coats the under side of its mostly upright leaves

with a smooth whitish bloom like the cabbage's. It is a

straggling little bush, even lower than the lamb-kill, and an

earlier bloomer, putting forth its loose, niggardly clusters of

deep rose or lilac-colored flowers in June.