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R. Schipper

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Eupatorium rugosum of Michigan Flora.

Swamps and thickets, as in ravines, floodplains, and rich hardwoods; openings and trails, cedar swamps, river banks.

Native in southern Michigan north, near the Great Lakes, to Benzie and Iosco Cos, and in the western Upper Peninsula. A 1940 collection from along a roadside in Emmet Co. was surmised to be an escaped from cultivation.

A toxic substance in this plant can cause “trembles,” a fatal disease of cattle which have browsed on it and transmittable to humans by their milk, in whom the consequent “milk sickness” caused many deaths on the 19th century frontier in this country (Duffy, 1990).

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