THE WEEDS OF NEW SOUTH WALES. 49 



He then quotes Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Plants of India to 

 the effect that professional beggars in Europe used to employ its juices to 

 produce blisters or open sores in order to obtain sympathy, and that the 

 inhabitants of Wallachia (now part of Roumania) used to employ it as a 

 vegetable heat destroying its poisonous properties. This implies a low 

 standard of living, and if, unfortunately, this buttercup should ever become 

 plentiful, it offers no prospects as a vegetable to Australians. 



How to deal with it. Where this plant occurs only in single plants or 

 very small quantities, it is desirable to dig out each plant and carefully de- 

 stroy it, but where this is impracticable, the damp low-lying ground in 

 which it is usually found should, if possible, be drained and cultivated. It 

 is a buttercup worth going to reasonable expense over. 



Rough-seeded Buttercup (Ranunculus muricatus L.). 

 (RANUNCULACE^E : Buttercup Family.) 



Popular Description. A small-flowered buttercup with shape of leaves 

 not rare amongst buttercups, and bearing abundance of burrs very objection- 

 able to wool-growers. 



Botanical Description. 



Glabrous or sparingly pubescent, branched from the base. Lower and basal 

 leaves on long broad petioles, the blade reniform or cordate-orbicular, three- 

 lobed, cleft or crenate ; the upper three divided cuneate, short-petioled or sessile ; 

 flowers light-yellow, the petals exceeding the calyx ; head of fruit globular ; 

 achenes flat, densely muricate and spiny on the sides, tipped with a stout 

 slightly-curved beak of one-half their length. 



Names. The name muricatus is a Latin adjective, often used in descrip- 

 tive botany: it means rough, with short and hard tubercular excrescences 

 (from a shell-fish, murex, muricis). The reference in the present plant is to 

 the rough seeds (or rough carpels) and hence the name " Rough-seeded 

 Buttercup" may be applied to it, as I do not know of any definite name 

 already in use. 



Experience in Australia. A burr-weed. This buttercup has now spread 

 over most of the States, chiefly in naturally damp, undrained places, such as 

 buttercups usually enjoy. It mostly occurs in the cooler districts, but it is 

 spreading chiefly owing to its rough hooked seeds. These constitute a real 

 source of danger to the wool-grower, as they depreciate his wool, and the 

 plant is not only spread by the fleece, but also by the hocks of the larger 

 grazing animals. 



How to deal with it. See remarks under R. sceleratus above. 



