IRISH GARDENING 



VOLUME V. 



No. 57 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE 



ADVANCEMENT OF HORTICULTURE AND 



ARBORICULTURE IN IRELAND 



NOVRxMBER 



Weeds. 



By Profkssor JAMES WILSON, Royal College of Science for Ireland. 



is a pity we have 

 no better n a m e 

 than w c c d f o r 

 weeds ! And a pity 

 also, since the 

 name by itself is 

 not strong enough, 

 it has no very pithy 

 and strengthening 

 adjectives. Rujffian 

 is a fairly strong 

 word, much stronger than ivt'Ci/, yet we have 

 gone to the trouble of shoring it up with such 

 adjectives as callous or bloodthirsty or ricving'xn 

 order that its effect may be intensified in the 

 mind of the man who hears it. But such 

 adjectives add only a little weight to weed. A 

 ruffian weed, a thieving weed, a smothering 

 weed is only a little more than a weed. 

 Smothering is perhaps helpful because it 

 describes the ways of some weeds ; but still 

 it lacks pith. 



Or, if we cannot get a word or an adjective, 

 can we not get a phrase that will drive the 

 word iveed into our souls as a hammer drives a 

 nail into a piece of pine ? Such phrases as the 

 fly in the ointment, the sand in the machinery, 

 occur as examples of what is wanted. Only it 

 must be something more appropriate : some- 

 thing that will raise in our minds ideas with 

 regard to weeds comparable to the nauseousness 

 raised by one of these phrases and the raspiness 

 raised by the other. 



And we need it. We need it very badly, A 

 weed \sjnst a weed ; only a weed. Weeds do 



no great harm 

 others 



Some may do more than 

 they may shadow and smother the 



crop ; but for the main they merely seize upon 

 some of the food materials, some of the minerals, 

 that might have been absorbed by the plant. 

 And of these there are plenty more ! True, but 

 that is not all they do. They do far worse than 

 that. They seize the ingredient that is most 

 essential to the crop, the ingredient without 

 which, despite the superabundance of all the 

 others, the crop cannot come to maturity or 

 even to respectable vigour and stature. The\' 

 seize the drink of the crop, the liquid nourish- 

 ment that is required in a thousand times 

 greater quantity than that which might be 

 cailled the solid meat. 



And this can be demonstrated. Forty years 

 ago at Rothamsted there were two plots of land 

 on one of which a barley crop was grown, 

 while the other was fallow. At the end of 

 June — the end of June remember — when the 

 barley crop was only three months old, the 

 fallow plot contained a half more water than 

 the other. As a matter of fact only 20 per cent, 

 of the first three feet of the soil of the barley 

 plot was water ; while in the soil of the fallow 

 plot there was 30 per cent, of water. The 

 10 per cent, difference represented the water the 

 barley had withdrawn from the soil and cast 

 back again into the air. 



And if barley can do this, why not any other 

 plant? Why not any weed? Barley is not a 

 large plant, but docks and thistles and cow 

 parsnip are large ones, and plenty of little 

 weeds are quite equal to one or two big ones. 



Still another example. In many parts of 

 Canada and some of the American States the 

 rainfall is very small — only half our thirty or 

 forty inches per annum — too small to raise 



