Word: alkaloids
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...chowdered, mussels may be eaten, like oysters, during the "R" months. But while oysters are not harvested during the summer because they are propagating, summer mussels are not harvested because they are dangerous if they have been feeding on a variety of plankton (Gonyaulax catenella), which contains a powerful alkaloid poison. Diggers should pass up the long, purplish-yellow mussels, tough and poor-tasting, in favor of the slate-black, chunky variety...
Long used as a remedy for gout, colchicine is a slightly poisonous alkaloid compound which occurs in the seeds of the meadow saffron or autumn crocus, Colchicum autumnale. Two years ago Dr. Albert Francis Blakeslee, famed geneticist of the Carnegie Institution's station on Long Is land, announced the discovery of remark able effects produced on plants by colchicine (TIME, Nov. 8, 1937). The drug causes a doubling of the chromosomes (heredity carriers) in the germ cells of vegetables and flowers, producing sharp changes which breed true. It increased the growth rates of tobacco, phlox, onions, pumpkins, cosmos, radishes...