Letharia Vulpina - Uses - Poison

Poison

The use of this species for poisoning wolves and foxes goes back at least hundreds of years, based on the mention of the practice in Christoph Gedner's "Of the use of curiosity", collected in Benjamin Stillingfleet, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Natural History, Husbandry and Physics (London, 1759). According to British lichenologist Annie Lorrain Smith, reindeer carcasses were stuffed with lichen and powdered glass, and suggests that the sharp edges of the glass would make the animals' internal organs more susceptible to the effects of the lichen poison. However, it is known that the lichen itself is also effective—powdered lichen added to fat and inserted into reindeer carcasses will also be fatal to wolves that consume it. The toxic chemical is the yellow dye vulpinic acid, which is poisonous to all meat-eaters, but not to mice and rabbits.