Butterfly on Poinsettia
by Kathy White
Title
Butterfly on Poinsettia
Artist
Kathy White
Medium
Photograph - Photography--greeting Cards Or Notes Are Cheaper By The Dozen!
Description
I took this photograph of a butterfly on a poinsettia plant. I love colorful poinsettias and of course, adore butterflies, so this is a great photo for my enjoyment.
The poinsettia is particularly well known for its red and green foliage and is widely used in Christmas floral displays. The colored bracts—which are most often flaming red but can also be orange, pale green, cream, pink, white or marbled—and are often mistaken for flower petals because of their groupings and colors, but are actually leaves.
Poinsettia flowers are actually great nectar plants for butterflies. The flowers themselves are small, yellow, and located at the ends of branches. Since they’re not particularly showy, the colored leaves (known technically as “bracts”) help to draw pollinators to the flowers. Butterflies are common visitors to poinsettia, and important pollinators. When they stop by to drink from the yellow buds, their legs and bodies brush against the short red stamens, picking up the yellow pollen to be distributed when they fly off to visit another plant.
I got to thinking, when looking at this photo though,about how I had always heard that poinsettias could be so toxic to humans, I decided to look it up and see what I could find on that. According to Wikipedia, it is not true, although there are some issues with it.
In the United States and perhaps elsewhere, there is a common misconception that the poinsettia is highly toxic. This misconception was spread by a 1919 urban legend of a two-year-old child dying after consuming a poinsettia leaf.
While the sap and latex of many plants of the spurge genus are indeed toxic, the poinsettia's toxicity is relatively mild. Its latex can cause an allergic reaction in sensitive individuals. It is also mildly irritating to the skin or stomach and may sometimes cause diarrhea and vomiting if eaten. Sap introduced into the human eye may cause temporary blindness. An American Journal of Emergency Medicine study of 22,793 cases reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers showed no fatalities, and furthermore that a strong majority of poinsettia exposures are accidental, involve children, and usually do not result in any type of medical treatment. POISINDEX, a major source for poison control centers, says a 50-pound child would have to eat 500 bracts to accumulate levels of toxins found to be harmful in experiments. An Ohio State University study showed no problems even with extremely large doses.
Uploaded
February 13th, 2013
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