36 AMERICAN HONEY PLANTS 



followed b}^ a dearth for a time, and the unfinished sections were filled out 

 with bitterweed honey. The sections looked very nice and a northern 



Fig. 21. Honey from bittervvted is unfit for table use. 



beekeeper who had recently settled near the town of Salem, innocently 

 sold his honey to the townspeople. The next time he came to town there 

 were numerous persons looking for him, and he found it necessary to 

 take back most of the honey he had marketed on his previous visit. The 

 honey from this source is so bitter that a very little of it will spoil a fine 

 crop of the best white honey. A few cells are sufficient to make a whole 

 section absolutely unpalatable. 



On a visit to Tennessee the author was very much interested in this 

 plant, which grows freely along roadsides, in barnyards and similar places, 

 much as dogfennel or mayweed does in the Northern States. The range 

 of the plant is given as from Arkansas and Texas to North Carolina. It 

 probably does not appear to any extent north of Tennessee. 

 Chas. Mohr says of it (Plant Life of Alabama, page 54) : 



"The bitterweed, originally from 'the sunny plains west of the Mis- 

 sissippi River south of the Arkansas Valley, was first observed in Mo- 

 bile in 1866. It has spread along the embankments of the railroads 



