But as Bartram’s packing list suggests, there is more to these plants than the painful, itchy rashes they cause. The common three-leaved plant and its relatives-poison oak and poison sumac, found in North America, and the lacquer tree, native to Asia-all contain urushiol, an organic compound that sets off violent allergic reactions in most humans. For most people poison ivy has long meant just one thing: suffering. It may seem incredible that Bartram offered these noxious plants for sale and that people in Europe actually bought them. Numbers 114 and 120 on the list, bracketing 5 varieties of grapes, were a bit different: “ Rhus vernix” and “ Rhus radicans,” known to us today as poison sumac and poison ivy. Bartram’s shipment included 12 oak species, 9 different pines, and 3 kinds of plums, along with such flowering plants as sunflowers and morning glories. European collectors were eager to buy New World trees and plants, whether useful, ornamental, or simply unusual. He was packing up seeds and young plants to send across the Atlantic, as he had many times before. One October day in 1784 Philadelphia horticulturalist William Bartram wrote out a list of 220 “American Trees, Shrubs, & herbs” in his fine, flowing handwriting.
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