120O Home Nature-Study Course. 



LESSON XXXVI 



OUTLINE FOR THE STUDY OP A WEED 



(i). Why do we call a plant a weed? Is a weed a weed wherever 

 it grows ? What about "butter and eggs " when it grew in grandmother's 

 garden? Why do we call that a weed now? What did grandmother 

 call it ? 



(2). In how many ways may a weed injure us? 



(3). Why must you study the habits of a weed before you will know 

 how to fight it? 



(4). Ask of every weed in your garden, "How and why do you manage 

 to get here despite all my efforts to keep you out?" and tell the answer 

 the weed makes. 



Observations by pupils. — 



(5). Do you know this weed when it is a seedling? This is the time 

 when all weeds are easiest to kill and a knowledge of how they look 

 at this stage of their lives is a great help toward ridding the field or 

 garden of their hurtful presence. If the weed seedhng grew in your 

 garden, was it early or late in germinating ? That is, did it sprout with 

 your earliest peas or radishes, or wait till time to plant the heat-loving 

 corn or melons ? How do its seed-leaves differ from those that came later? 



(6). What kind of root has the weed? A single, deep-boring tap- 

 root, like the wild carrot; or a tassel-like root of many fibres, also boring 

 deep, like the plantain; or a spreading, many-branched but shallow- 

 growing root, like the purslane; or a creeping root-stock with under- 

 ground buds capable of sending up other plants at a distance from the 

 main stem, like the Canada thistle? Would you be able to guess from 

 the character of its root whether the weed grows up in one season from 

 the seed or is able to survive one or more winters? 



(7). What sort of stem has it? Round, angled, or grooved; solid 

 or hollow; rough or smooth; hairy or woolly or perhaps bearing spines? 

 Is it strong, woody and upright, or weak? Is it brittle? Does it trail 

 on the ground, like the chickweed? Is it many branched, like the pig- 

 weeds, or slender and leafless, like the plantains? Does the plant send 

 up groups of stems in different stages of growth, as the plantains do, 

 or a single straight stalk, like the hawkweed? Are the stems splotched, 

 or streaked with color in such characteristic way as might help you 

 to identify the plant? 



(8). Describe its leaves. Do they grow opposite each other or alter- 

 nately on the stalk? Are they simple or compound, that is, all in one 



