386 TROUBLESOME PLANTS [1758. 



destroy them. Mowing will kill them in a few years, if repeated 

 three or four times a year. They bear a large black berry, and as 

 good as the others, and is the first ripe, near the latter end of 

 June. 



The fourth sort grows about three or four feet high, upright, 

 and one side of the leaves of a fine silver.* These grow in few 

 places ; but where they take root they seem to spread and cover 

 the ground. 



The next native, that is troublesome in our old fields, is a late- 

 flowering, perennial, white Aster, with a spreading top [A. eri- 

 coides, L ?], the flower much like your single daisy. These will 

 spread all over a field so thick as to destroy all the grass, and 

 most herbs, too, except your Hypericum, which only is a fit match 

 for it ; both which no creature likes to eat. Ploughing destroys 

 most of the old roots, but increaseth the young ones, from seed ; 

 for the year after a crop of wheat is cut, a field will appear as 

 white as snow, when the plant is in flower. 



The lesser Ambrosia is a very troublesome weed, in plantations 

 where it hath got ahead. It is an annual, and grows with corn, 

 and after harvest it shoots above the stubble, growing three or 

 four feet high, and so thick that one can hardly walk through it. 

 It is very bitter, and if milk cows feed upon it (for want of enough 

 of grass), their milk will taste very loathsome. It seldom grows 

 to any head the next year, nor until the field is ploughed or sowed 

 again. 



We have another weed, called Cotton Groundsel \Erechtites hie- 

 racifolia, Raf.], which grows with us six or seven feet high, and 

 the stalk at bottom, near as thick as my wrist, in our new cleared 

 land after the first ploughing, in the spring, or in our marshes, the 

 year after they are drained and cleared. It grows there all over, 

 so close that there is no passing along without breaking it down, 

 to walk or ride through it ; but in old fields, or meadows, there is 

 not one stalk to be seen. Now, if we put the question, how comes 

 this to grow so prodigiously on the new land ploughed ground, and 

 perhaps not one root growing within several miles, the answer is 

 very ready : it is natural to new land and not to old.f But our 



* This perhaps refers to the Rubus euneifolius, of Puksh's Flora, published more 

 than half a century afterwards. 



f This "very ready" answer, might, perhaps, be very satisfactory, if we knew 

 precisely what was meant by a plant being "natural" to land; but the naked 



