22 



THE MUSEUM. 



tie pink-tipped English daisy, so ten- 

 derly reared in New England gardens, 

 is in its own country a troublesome 

 lawn weed, while our homely mullein, 

 that vagabond of the pastures, is — or 

 used to be — cherished in English green- 

 houses under the name of "American 

 flannel-plant. " I have even heard that 

 there are places west of the Mississippi 

 where wild carrot, despised intruder on 

 Eastern lawns, is cosseted and extolled 

 under the appropriate alias of "lace- 

 flower." It is a pity that we, in the 

 Eastern states, have become blind to 

 the beauty of its feathery leaves, and 

 its wheels of delicate bloom, which in 

 later August fill every field and road- 

 side with unloved loveliness. 



Fig. ig. 



Indeed, all weeds are much in evi- 

 dence in late summer and autumn. 

 The flowers of most sorts are incon- 

 spicuous, but the seeds which follow 

 compel attention by sheer force of 

 numbers and ubiquity. They are here 

 today to fight the farmers because 

 they practiced ages ago what the 

 farmers have learned only within the 

 present century. Nature has taken 

 extraordinary care that the seeds do 

 not drop, at the roots of the parent 

 plant, into an exhausted soil. The 

 weeds sow themselves broadcast each 

 autumn. Some are provided with 

 feathery plumes, and thus made so 



bouyant that the lightest breeze will 

 bear them fast and far. Every autumn 

 gust is freighted with a mixed com- 

 pany of these little flyaways. Thistle, 

 sow-thistle, dandelion, milkweed, and 



Fig. 20. 



goldenrod seeds all lly on feathery 

 wings, and thus the respective families 

 are kept up, and are spread over the 

 country. 



Some weeds lay hold on the passer- 

 by, quadreped or biped, and force 

 him, will he, nill he, to sow their seeds 

 abroad. To bring this result about, 

 the seeds are' barbed, and they claw 

 the unwary traveller and cli i^' to him 

 with v^sperating constancy. When 

 the "stickers" are at last picked or 

 rubbed off, they fall to the ground, 

 probably many rods from the spot 

 where they grew, and thus Nature's 

 purpose with regard to them is achiev- 

 ed. This is the way the ragweed tra- 

 vels. The thorny seed-vessels of the 

 cockle-bur and the burdock also ob- 

 tain free transportation in return for 

 their close attachment to some way- 

 farer, quadraped or biped. So success- 



Fig. 21. 



