Teacher's Leaflet. 



1209 



Cheeses 



Round-leaved Mallow (Malva rotuitdifolia) . — This weed behaves as though it 

 had been domesticated, for it is common only in cultivated ground where it is 

 very much at home and a great nuisance. Children have named it " Cheeses " 

 and "Shirt button plant," and eat the flat, circular, button-like green seed-carpels, 

 liking their sweet mucilaginous meat. Its deep, branching roots seem to penetrate 

 about as far into the soil as its creeping stems spread above it. Its long-stemmed, 

 crinkly round leaves are five-ribbed and lobed, and the stems are softly fuzzy. 

 The pale-pink flowers, veined with deeper pink, have short stems and seem to 

 snuggle under their round parasols for shelter, several growing from the axil 

 of the same leaf; each of the pink petals is notched at the tip and the calyx is 

 five-lobed. The stamens are united in a column. The pollen grains which 

 fall from the anthers look like pearls when viewed through a lens. When ripe, 

 the little " cheese " shows that it is formed of many segments, each one a seed 

 that falls away to grow, this year or next, and take the place of plants which the 

 gardener has uprooted. "Let no cheeses ripen" should be the gardener's motto. 

 Orange Hawkweed or Devil's Paintbrush (Hieracium aurantiacum) . — Here is 

 one of the most " undesirable citizens " of the plant world that has come to 

 us from Europe. It increases its vicious kind in all sorts of ways, by long, slender, 

 creeping perennial root-stocks; by throwing out stolons or runners; and by its 

 numberless, winged seeds. If its seed enters the soil too late to grow a flowering 

 stalk this year, it forms a woolly winter rosette and waits till the next. It belongs 

 to the Composite Family, which have many flowers in one head, and is as beautiful 

 as it is bad. Its blossoming season lasts from June till snow-time. Its flowers 

 arc a flaming orange-red in color, an inch or more broad when fully open, and 

 are bunched at the top of a strong, straight, hairy stem from six inches to a foot 

 in length. The stem is leafless except for one or two bracts, and the hairs which 

 bristle around it are black, which has given the weed in England the name of 

 " Grim the Collier." The leaves are hairy too but green on both sides, long and 

 slender and tapering toward the stem. Stem and leaves besides being hairy 



