160 TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY REPORT. 
The First Annual Report!’ of the Station contains an account 
of an investigation to determine the number of seeds which average 
individuals of the common kinds of weeds may be expected to 
produce. Fifteen kinds of weeds were studied. It was found that 
the dandelion produces upwards of 1,200 seeds per plant; the ox- 
eye-daisy, 800 to 96,000; the common plantain, 4,500; the pig weed, 
825,000; and the purslane, 2,146,500. Certainly the prolificacy of 
some weeds is marvelous! 
A few years later an attempt was made to determine the number 
of weeds of different kinds which may grow on an acre. Plats 
containing one-twentieth acre each were plowed and harrowed in 
May and then left undisturbed for the remainder of the season. 
The weeds were pulled and counted on three different occasions. 
One plat produced 8,809 weeds, which is at the rate of 176,180 per 
acre; a second plat yielded at the rate of 81,900 per acre; a third’ 
plat, 241,360; and a fourth plat (old meadow), 767,640. 
An answer to the query concerning the number of weeds which 
may grow upon a definite area of cultivated soil was sought in yet 
a different way.”° On December I1 a square foot of surface soil 
taken to a depth of three inches from a field which had had clean 
culture was transferred to the greenhouse. The same was done 
with a square foot of soil from a plat which had been allowed to 
run to weeds unchecked the previous season. Once a month the 
germinations in both lots were counted, the plantlets removed and 
the soil thoroughly stirred for the succeeding month’s growth. 
From the square foot of clean cultivated soil 92 weeds were ob- 
tained and from the foul soil 384. On April 14 the experiment was 
repeated with similar foot-square samples taken from the same 
plats, but only to one-half the depth, and treated in the same man- 
ner. This time the clean cultivated soil gave 138 and the foul soil 
649 weeds. “It is interesting to note that the soil which was 
longest exposed to the winter cold gave the largest number of 
germinations although there was only half as much of it.” 
In the course of some investigations on the germination of weed 
seeds it was discovered that some kinds of weed seeds when 
gathered, preserved and tested in the same way as garden seeds 
give only from none to seven or eight per ct. of germination.™” 
* Rpt. 1:85-87 (1882). 
® Rpts. 4:289-291 (1885) ; 5:281-283 (1886) ; 6:356-360 (1887). 
™ Rpt. 6:360-361. 
™ Rpt. 6:362-363. 
