MYSTERY PLANT: Flower has beauty but also bad taste This one
loves a dry, hardscrabble roadside, below a stop sign or a
traffic marker or maybe the open edge of a gravelly parking lot.
You get the idea. Or you might see it in what we call an
“overgrazed” pasture: horses and cows tend to avoid it, so the
plants can go crazy, without too much danger of being munched
on. The plants have a bitter or acrid taste, so it makes sense
that livestock don’t care for it very much. In fact, some say
that cows which have eaten this plant will produce bitter milk.
You can try chewing on this plant to see what it tastes like,
but beware, it IS slightly toxic! The leaves are narrow, thin
and needle-like. They are fragrant, when crushed, in a sort of
sweetly medicinal, camphor-like way, but many people will say
that they are just plain stinky. As the plants get older (and
taller), they tend to lose their lower leaves, which may remain
attached to the stem for a while, turning brown. Most people
would probably think that such a