BUCKWHEAT FAMILY POLYGONACEAE 
WOOD KNOTWEED 
Polygonum virginianum L. 
The Buckwheat family is quite large and contains the 
cultivated Buckwheat and all of the Docks and Smart- 
weeds as well as the plants included here. 
There are many kinds of Knotweeds, 
a number of which grow in dry 
places and others in wet. The Wood 
Knotweed, however, grows as a rule 
only in woods and thickets. It is 
found from Nova Scotia to Minne-— 
sota and south to Florida and Texas, — 
and blooms from July to November. 
The stem is 1-4 feet tall and 
mostly smooth. It may be unbranch- 
J ed or with a few branches above the - 
/ middle. It is swollen at the joints, © 
and the leaf stipules form cylindrical - 
-sheaths about the joints. These 
sheaths are hairy and fringed at the 
top with short bristles. : 
The flowers are borne on a long k 
slender spike. There is no corolla 
but the greenish white calyx, which 
is unequally 4-parted, is somewhat 
i corollalike. There are 5 stamens and 
i I pistil with 2 long styles. The fruit 
is an akene which is dark brown or 
Se creamy, smooth and shining. 
The plant has an interesting 
method of scattering its fruits. When 
mature these are reflexed on the 
spike, the persistent styles becoming curved and rigid. If the 
ends of the styles are touched with the finger, or by an animal 
or any object, the fruit suddenly hops off from the spike like a 
bug from a stick and may fall several feet away. 
There flames the first gay daffodil 
Where winter-long the snows have lain. 
Daffodils—RvuTH GUTHRIE HARDING 
78 
