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Locoweed (also crazyweed and loco) is a common name in North America for any plant that produces swainsonine, an alkaloid harmful to livestock. Worldwide, swainsonine is produced by a small number of species , most of them in three genera of the flowering plant family Fabaceae : Oxytropis and Astragalus in North America , [ 1 ] and Swainsona in ...
Oxytropis sericea is a species of flowering plant in the legume family known by the common names white locoweed, white point-vetch, whitepoint crazyweed, and silky crazyweed. It is native to western North America from Yukon and British Columbia south through the Pacific Northwest , the Rocky Mountains , and the Great Plains .
Oxytropis campestris, the field locoweed, [3] is a plant native to Northern Europe, the mountains of Central & Southern Europe, the Northwestern United States and all of Canada, sometimes grown as an ornamental plant. It is found in prairies, woods, and meadows, and prefers gravelly and rocky slopes, where it grows most abundantly.
Oxytropis is a genus of plants in the legume family.It includes over 600 species native to subarctic to temperate regions of North America and Eurasia. [1] It is one of three genera of plants known as locoweeds, and are notorious for being toxic to grazing animals.
The Oxytropis lambertii plant is one of the locoweeds most frequently implicated in livestock poisoning. [8] The toxin is called swainsonine.Research suggests that the plant itself may not be toxic, but becomes toxic when inhabited by endophytic fungi of the genus Embellisia, which produce swainsonine.
The biosynthesis of swainsonine has been investigated in the fungus Rhizoctonia leguminicola, and it initially involves the conversion of lysine into pipecolic acid.The pyrrolidine ring is then formed via retention of the carbon atom of the pipecolate's carboxyl group, as well as the coupling of two more carbon atoms from either acetate or malonate to form a pipecolylacetate.
Oxytropis podocarpa is a species of flowering plant in the legume family known by the common names stalkpod locoweed, stalked-pod crazyweed, and Gray's point-vetch. It is native to North America, where it occurs in the northern latitudes , from Yukon and British Columbia across the low arctic to northern Quebec and Labrador .
Some astragalus species can be toxic, such as those found in the United States containing the neurotoxin swainsonine, which causes "locoweed" poisoning in animals. [11] Some astragalus species may contain high levels of selenium , possibly causing toxicity.