A Story for Botanists

— On the old state road, about Botanists. halfway between the villages of Avon and Caledonia in New York, there is a little knoll close to the roadside, upon which has blossomed for seventy-eight summers what would be regarded as a common weed only for certain weird associations which have given it a wide fame, making the murder plant, as it is called, one of the sights of Avon Springs. For seventy-eight years the hardy little shrub has come up in the very spot where verified tradition says it was never seen before the spring of 1814 ; and although its stonelike seeds have been wind-sown, not a trace of the plant, it is affirmed, can be found elsewhere in the vicinity. Moreover, it is said that seeds of it sown elsewhere, no matter how carefully nourished, come to naught, and that its roots, if transplanted, only rot in the ground.

The story of the murder plant, as it was told by a most estimable woman who saw its first blossoms, and who lived almost within sight of the roadside hillock the rest of her life, may be relied upon in every detail. Her father had settled on the old Niagara road in 1800. His house was upon the very site of the one occupied by his grandchildren to-day, and was one of the best known stopping-places, or taverns, on the old state road, which was fairly opened about 1802. The first stage from Utica to the Genesee River made its pioneer trip in September, 1799, reaching Canawaugus (Avon) on the third day. During the war of 1812 the road was a thoroughfare for the soldiers and sailors passing between the seaboard and the lakes, and Smith’s tavern a welcome halting-place in the march through the wilderness. The daughter of mine host, whose children pass down her version of the story of the plant, became the wife of Sylvester Hosmer, a son of Dr. Timothy Hosmer, whose name is inseparable from the history of Livingston County. I well remember how the young folk visiting at “ Hosmer’s,” some thirty years ago, would draw out the old lady’s story of the interesting plant, which they made a point of visiting in the pale moonlight, some of them declaring that they experienced an unmistakable shiver when they plucked the tiny blue blossoms from the scraggy bush.

It was in the late afternoon of an October day (as Mrs. Hosmer used to tell the story) in the year 1813, about two months before Buffalo was burned. The troops at Sackett’s Harbor had been to Batavia to get their pay, and were returning. They had been “ stringing along ” all day in squads. Just at nightfall there was a break in the straggling procession, and for some time not a soldier was seen at Smith’s tavern ; then a little company of them arrived, saying that they had discovered in the woods by the roadside, west of the inn, a murdered man, a soldier. He was quite dead, and weltering in his gore. His pockets had been rifled, and there was every proof of his having been shot and robbed.

He was wrapped in his blanket and buried a few rods from the spot. On the mound where he was found, and which had been well known to all of the Smith family, the strange plant sprang up the next spring, and was watched by them with interest. No one had ever before seen its like in the neighborhood ; it was something new in the flora of the country.

Major Smith learned afterwards that the soldier’s name was Alexander ; that he was from New England, where he had a family, to whom he always sent his pay. He was on his way to Canandaigua to remit it to them when he was slain, undoubtedly by a comrade, in that lonely place in the woods. A teamster passing over the road that night had been accosted by a man on foot, who “looked wild and scared,” and asked if the soldiers had all gone by. A soldier by the name of Collins was executed at Sackett’s Harbor, not long afterwards, for shooting at an officer, and it was believed that he had committed the murder on the state road.

“ We fear the plant will not come up this spring,” writes one of the Hosmer family living in the old homestead. “So many visited it last summer, and pulled up the last root to be found. But it has never failed to make its appearance for seventy-eight years.”

It is to be hoped that the vandals have not exterminated it entirely, and that some skilled botanist will take pains to tell us if there is anything marvelous about it, — if it is in any way different from ordinary gromwell. Can this much - talked - about weed on the old state road claim special consideration as an illustration of the fungi we read of in Septimius Felton ? If that is the case, then why not give the world a brew of its leaves, or blossoms, or roots, or all of them combined, and who knows but we shall have found at last in the decoction the elixir of life, “ the seeds of which,” as Hawthorne put it, “ must be planted in a fresh grave of bloody death in order to make it effectual.”

P. S. “ There is no sign of the murder plant this summer ” is the last report. Per haps it is at last exterminated.