Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 April 1885 — A Laughing Plant. [ARTICLE]

A Laughing Plant.

There is not a flower that laughs, but one that creates laughter, if the printed stories of travelers are to be believed. It grows in Arabia and is called the laughing plant, because its seeds produce effects like those produced by laughing gas. The powers are of a bright yellow and the seedpods are soft and woolly, while the seeds resemble small black beans, and only two or three grow in a pod. The natives dry and pulverize them, and the powder, if taken in small doses, makes the soberest person behave like a circus clown or a madman, for he will dance, sing, and laugh most boisterously, and cut the most fantastic capers, and be in an uproariously ridiculous condition for about an hour. 'When the excitement ceases the exhausted exhibitor of these antics falls asleep, and when he awakes he has not the slightest remembrance of his frisky doings.— Vick’s Floral Magazine.