BISHOPSWEED 



light. As soon as this stem has reached the proper place, 

 which is just below the surface, there is an enormous develop- 

 ment of roots, which begin to search and explore their 

 favourite stratum of soil.^ 



In some few cases one can see in a dim sort of way the 

 reason for the level which certain plants prefer. Thus 

 the underground stems of the common Thistle, which are 

 very long and fleshy, are found just a few inches below the 

 level usually reached by plough or spade. This makes it 

 very difficult to tear them out. Even if grubbers with long 

 spikes which reach as deep as these buried stems are driven 

 through the ground, it generally happens that the stems are 

 only cut in pieces and not dragged up. These hardy weeds 

 are not much injured by little accidents of this kind, for each 

 separate bit will form upright thistle stems next year. In 

 fact if one cuts this fleshy subterranean runner of the Thistle 

 into pieces a quarter of an inch long, each piece will probably 

 become a TTiistle. 



Sometimes indeed these weeds are carried from one field to 

 another by pieces of them sticking in the very machines 

 which are used to eradicate them. 



The Bishops weed is one of the hardest cases. The writer 

 was once ambitious enough to try to dig up an entire plant 

 of this horrid weed. The first foot or so revealed no sign of 

 the end of the branching runners, and it was not until a hole 

 about four feet deep and five feet across had been excavated 

 that there was any sign of an end to the plant. 



When it was at last removed, the original deeply buried 



stem was found to give off* branches which again branched in 



a most complicated manner, until almost every green shoot of 



1 Pfeffer, I.e., p. 139. 



91 



