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Another not-very-abundant shrub in Jerry Pavese Park. My dog found it. It is mildly poisonous, and so could possibly kill a dog (or any mammal), or at least make it sick, but according to Jack Sanders: "No dog would be foolish enough to eat the leaves, which have an intensely acrid taste: the plant was once called bitterroot." While this plant was sometimes used in the past to treat people bitten by mad dogs, American dogbane likely got its name by being mistaken for some similar-looking European plant.
The interior construction of its pretty little blossoms is dangerous to flies, however. Apparently as they are sipping the nectar, their little tongues get wedged in by scales deep inside the blossom; and flies don't have the strength of larger insects, like butterflies and bees, to pull their tongues back out. And so sometimes they die there, hanging by their tongues. What a way to go.
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