WHITE 



be identified by its long tapering leaves and large, flat flower- 

 clusters. 



A beautiful and abundant seaside species is A. multiflorus. 

 Its small flower-heads are closely crowded on the low, bushy, 

 spreading branches ; its leaves are narrow, rigid, crowded, and 

 somewhat hoary. The whole effect of the plant is heath-like ; it 

 also somewhat suggests an evergreen. 



MILD WATER-PEPPER. 



Polygonum hydropiperoides. Buckwheat Family. 



Stevi. — One to three feet high; smooth; branching. Leaves. — Alter- 

 nate; narrowly lance-shaped or oblong. Flowers. — White or flesh-color; 

 small; growing in erect, slender spikes. Calyx. — Five-parted. Corolla. — 

 None. Stamens. — Eight. Pistil. — One, usually with three styles. 



These rather inconspicuous but very common flowers are 

 found in moist places and shallow water. 



The common knot weed, P. aviculai'e, which grows in such 

 abundance in country door-yards and waste places, has slender, 

 often prostrate, stems, and small greenish flowers, which are clus- 

 tered in the axils of the leaves or spiked at the termination of 

 the stems. This is perhaps the *' hindering knotgrass " to which 

 Shakespeare refers in the '■'■ Midsummer Night's Dream," so 

 terming it, not on account of its knotted trailing stems, but be- 

 cause of the belief that it would hinder the growth of a child. 

 In Beaumont and Fletcher's " Coxcomb " the same superstition 

 is indicated : 



' ' We want a boy 

 Kept under for a year with milk and knotgrass." 



It is said that many birds are nourished by the seeds of this 

 plant. 



lOO 



