Family Ranunculaceae (Buttercup Family).
A close relative of Black Cohosh (Actaea racemosa),
this plant has smaller round tufts of white flowers.
But its most striking feature is these berries, white
with black pupil-like spots. Doll’s Eyes is certainly
a descriptive name, but a young friend of old Pa
Pitt’s acquaintance suggested that perhaps Insane
Muppet Eyes would be even more descriptive. (The
bright magenta stem adds a certain something.) This
plant grew in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, where it was
fruiting in late August.
Do not eat the berries. They want to kill
you. Can’t you see it in their eyes? Another name for
this plant is “White Baneberry,” and you should take
the “bane” part seriously.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
ACTAÈA L. BANEBERRY, COHOSH. Sepals 4 or 6, falling
off when the flower expands. Petals 4-10, small, flat,
spatulate, on slender claws. Stamens numerous, with
slender white filaments. Pistil single; stigma
sessile, depressed, 2-lobed. Seeds smooth, flattened,
and packed horizontally in 2 rows. — Perennials, with
ample 2-3-ternately compound termina! raceme of white
flowers. (From aktea, actaea, ancient names of the
Elder, transferred by Linnaeus.)
A. álba (L.) Mill. (WHITE B.) Leaflets more
incised and sharply toothed [than those of A. rubra];
raceme ellipsoid; petals slender, mostly truncate at
the end, appearing to be transformed stamens; pedicels
thickened in fruit, as large as the peduncle and red,
the globular-ovoid berries white. — Rich woods,
flowering a week or two later than the other [which
flowers in April and May], and more common westward
and southward.
