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REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGIST AND BOTANIST. 189 
SESSIONAL PAPER No. 8a 
fined to the rich lands of the Red River valley. It is a very coarse tall-growing plant, 
which does not ripen its seeds until late in the season. Summer-fallowing every third 
year and a little hand pulling during the two crop years will soon clear land of this 
weed. The Great Ragweed is particularly obnoxious to grain buyers and millers, owing 
to the difficulty with which its seeds are separated from grain, as they are of about the 
same size and weight as the grains of wheat and consequently cannot be easily blown or 
sifted out of wheat. 
~Canapa Frieapane (Erigeron Canadensis, L.).—Called also Horseweed and incor- 
rectly ‘Fireweed.’ Annual. Native. A tall wand-like plant with small greenish-white 
flowers, to be seen with the two common biennials False Tansy (Artemisia biennis, Willd.) 
and Common Evening Primrose (@nothera biennis, L.) upon all summer-fallows. These 
three plants all of them flower much later than the time when land should be summer- 
fallowed to get the best results, both for controlling weeds as well as for the more 
important reason, in the West, of conserving moisture in the ground. The best remedy 
then for these is to summer-fallow early. 
Brut Bur (Lechinospermum Lappula, Lehm.)—Annual. Introduced. A weed 
which has appeared only of late years in the West but has spread very rapidly, owing 
to its bristly barbed seeds. As a rule this weed is a denizen of waste places and road- 
sides, but it is gradually working its way into the crops. The seeds ripen about the 
middle of July ; therefore land should be ploughed before that date to prevent the plants 
from seeding. 
Pepperarass (Lepidium apetalum, Willd. ).—Native. 
Winter annual. A weed which occasionally appears very 
abundantly, particularly on light land and in wet seasons. 
For the most part the seeds germinate in the autumn and 
the seeds are produced the following season. The appear- 
} ance of the plants in autumn and spring is as flat rosettes 
| of narrow deeply indented leaves lying close to the ground 
“ with a single central tap root. Dise-harrowing in autumn 
and spring is the best treatment of land for this and other 
plants of a biennial habit. 
SkuNK-TAIL Grass (Hordeum jubatum, L.).—This grass 
is one of the most troublesome weeds in hay. Although it 
may when young be cut as hay and fed without danger, 
the hard ripe seeds often cause very painful sores in the 
mouths of horses and cattle, as they are very sharp-pointed 
wey and barbed. They run down by the side of the teeth, or 
“ye penetrate any soft part of the mouth particularly beneath 
the tongue and into the tongue itself. There are two dis- 
tinct forms of this grass, one with long silvery awns, 2 
: inches long, and another with a more erect habit which has 
Fig. 19. Peppergrass awns little more than half that length. Various methods 
have been tried to clean hay lands of this troublesome pest, 
but none with much success. If the Skunk-tail Grass is cut when quite young, it makes 
tolerably good feed, and hay lands where it occurs should be mowed early before the 
ripening of this injurious grass. A method of cleaning hay practised at Gladstone, 
Man., is to toss the hay with a pitch fork on a windy day before using it, when most of 
the light feathery heads of the Skunk-tail Grass will blow away from the hay and may 
then be gathered up and destroyed. Whenever this grass is seen in waste places or 
roadsides it should be mowed before it is ripe and burnt. 
This grass is generally described as an annual, but in Manitoba it is certainly a 
biennial, and apparently sometimes a perennial. It is a bunch grass and has no running 
toot-stocks, growing only from seed. 
