BURNING TREE OF BURMA

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 16, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 36.

BURNING TREE OF BURMA.

There has lately been added to the collection of plants at the Botanic Gardens at Madras, India, a specimen of a strange tree. It is in size scarcely more than a bush, but others of its species are known to have attained, in their habitat in the Himalayas, Burma, and the Malacca Peninsula, the dimensions of a large tree, from fifty to seventy-five feet in height. The Madras specimen is surrounded by a strong railing, which bears the sign: “Dangerous—All persons are forbidden to touch the leaves or branches of this tree.” It is, therefore, a forbidden tree in the midst of the garden, but no one is tempted to it, for it is known to be a “burning tree.”

This name is a misnomer, for the tree stings rather than burns. Beneath the leaves there are stings, comparable to those nettles which when touched pierce the skin and secrete a fluid which certainly has a burning effect. The sting leaves no outward sign, but the sensation of pain persists sometimes for months, and is especially keen on damp days, or when the place which has been wounded is plunged in water. The natives in the parts of Burma where this tree grows are in such terror of it that they fly in haste when they perceive the peculiar odor which it exhales.

If they happen to touch it, they fall on the ground, and roll over and over on the earth with shrieks. Dogs touched by it yelp and run, biting and tearing the part of their bodies that has been touched. A horse which had come in contact with a “burning tree” ran like a mad thing, biting everything and everybody that it could reach. A missionary at Mandalay, who investigated a leaf of the plant with his forefinger, suffered agony for several weeks, and for ten months felt occasionally darting pains in his finger.—Information.