180 



THE INDIANA WEED BOOK. 



daisy-like heads, a handsome weed, flourishing for the most part 

 in dry, much compacted soils along pasture pathways and in 

 country barnyards where men and hogs and cattle are r ont to 

 travel or congregate. Cow-weed would be 

 a more appropriate name than dog-weed or 

 dog-fennel, for it grows best about those 

 spots where kine gather and ruminate. The 

 juice is acrid and often poisons the skin 

 when the plant is freely handled. Each 

 year it springs up and holds its own, star- 

 ring the margins of the pathways with the 

 yellow crowns and white rays. Scraping 

 the mud from the swine which hurry past, 

 trampled many times by slow-moving cows, 

 though mud-bedaubed or broken in stem 

 it succeeds in ripening its seeds and 

 perpetuating its kind upon the face of 

 earth. An alien from the byways of 

 Europe, it triumphs where many of our 

 native weeds would fail, mainly by its 

 properties of perseverance and stubborn- 

 ness of spirit. Its seeds are often found 

 mixed with those of clover or grass. Remedies : mowing roadsides 

 and barnyards twice each year before the flowers appear ; in fields, 

 mowing or burning the mature plants ; clean seeding and thorough 

 cultivation. 



150. CHRYSANTHEMUM LEUCANTHEMUM L. Ox-eye Daisy. White Daisy. 



White-weed. (P. I. 1.) 



Steins erect or ascending, simple or few branched, often several from 

 a single root, 1-2 feet high ; basal leaves oblong or spoon-shaped, coarsely 

 toothed or cut-lobed, narrowed into slender stalks; stem leaves alternate, 

 sessile or partly clasping, linear or oblong, deeply cut-toothed or entire. 

 Heads few or solitary at the ends of the stem or branches, 1-2 inches 

 broad, on long leafless stalks; receptacle flat, naked; involucre saucer- 

 shaped, its bracts oblong, appressed, in several overlapping rows, their 

 edges brownish ; disk-flowers numerous, yellow, fertile ; rays 20-30, white, 

 spreading. Achenes gray or black, club-shaped, 1/12 inch long, angled 

 or ribbed; pappus none. (Fig. 139.) 



Common in southern Indiana in old meadows, fields and along 

 roadsides, usually in poor dry upland soil; less frequent north- 

 ward. May-Oct. One of the most handsome and popular of our 

 Compositse yet, where it gets a good start, one of the worst of weeds. 

 In many of the eastern States it takes almost complete possession 



Fig. 138. (After Vasey.) 



