ee 
‘ 
; 
REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST. 187 
SESSIONAL PAPER No. 8a 
Batt Musrarp [WNeslia paniculata (L.) Desy. ].—Annual 
Introduced. A tail, slender, somewhat branching, orange- 
Vy flowered plant, with a great number of small single-seeded almost 
NV We cound pods, each one borne on a slender foot-stalk. Like the 
Tumbling Mustard and the Hare’s-ear Mustard, this is a recent 
<4 
\, ie 
& 4 } introduction into America, but has spread through the wheat- 
\\i9 “th Loo a growing districts with alarming rapidity. Mr. Braithwaite says : 
\ (ls) Ns ‘This is a very bad weed as is shown by the way it has spread.’ 
W Hl? SMe Mr. Willing writes of it: ‘Ball Mustard has made more head- 
Hl \ N way in Alberta and Saskatchewan in a given number of years 
| N ra than any introduced weed.’ 
\ f SS 
\ 
Witp Mustarp (Brassica sinapistrum, Bois.).—The true 
Wild Mustard or Charlock, also called Cadluck and Herrick, is 
not, compared with many others, a common weed in the West. 
The plant most frequently spoken of there as Wild Mustard is the 
Bird Rape (Brassica campestris, L.). The two plants may be 
b ® easily distinguished. In Wild Mustard the stems and leaves are 
rough, the joints of the stems marked with purple, the knotted 
pods about one inch long on short thick foot-stalks, erect and 
tipped with an empty or one-seeded two-edged beak. Inthe Bird 
Rape the stems and pods are perfectly smooth and glaucous, the 
pods, which are from 14 inches to 24 inches in length, stand out 
from the stem on slender spreading foot-stalks. 
= 
oe 
pte 
re £ 
SAS 
SHEPHERD'S Purse (Capsella Bursa-pastoris, Mcnch).— 
Annual. Introduced. This plant, like the Stink Weed, is fre- 
quently overtaken by winter when in full flower, but is in no way 
injured, the flowers and pods of the late autumn developing the 
following spring and producing an early crop of seeds. Few 
people have paid the attention to this weed in the West, which 
its noxious character, as it there develops, demands, and as a con- 
sequence it is increasing and spreading in an alarming manner, 
not only in gardens but in wheat fields. Owing to the early date. 
at which the minute seeds develop and the enormous numbers in which these are pro- 
duced, I fear this weed is going to be a cause of serious loss to western farmers. The 
plant is easily recognized by its rosette of cut-up leaves lying close to the ground, and 
bearing from the centre a much branched stem covered from bottom to top with 
numerous flat triangle-shaped pods. This weed is a close relative of the Stink Weed, 
and land infested with it should be specially attended to. The seeds are frequently too 
ripe by the middle of June to allow of their being ploughed down without danger. 
Summer-fallows should therefore be cultivated or mowed before being ploughed. 
Fie. 18.— Ball Mustard. 
Lamp’s Quarters (Chenopodium album, L.).—Called in different places by several 
other names, in Manitoba most widely known as Pigweed, also as Fat-hen, Goosefoot and 
Wild Spinach. Lamb’s Quarters, however, is the name used over by far the largest 
area in Canada, and Pigweed properly belongs to the common Amaranth or Red-root. 
The Lamb’s Quarters, which is an annual plant, of which there are both native and 
introduced forms, the latter, however, being by far the most abundant in the West, finds 
in the highly fertile and slightly alkaline soils which prevail there, just such conditions 
as enable it to develop most luxuriantly, and it is so prevalent in some seasons as to 
cause a very large loss to farmers, not only in crowding out and robbing the grain while 
growing, but in every other way reducing the value of the crop by increasing the labour 
and expense of harvesting, threshing and shipping, and the subsequent and always 
unpopular dockage for weed seeds by the grain buyer or miller. The Lamb’s Quarters 
prevails to so much greater an extent than any other weed that with some farmers the 
word ‘ weeds’ means nothing else. It is a succulent annual which does not ripen its 
