128 THE WEEDS OF SEW SOUTH WALES. 



Two Forms. There is a more rigid form, with prickly toothed leaves which 

 also occurs in New South Wales and possesses the same properties. It is 

 known as variety asper (rough), and some, following Linnaeus, look upon it 

 as a distinct species, under the name of Sonchus asper, but there are grada- 

 tions between it and the normal form. 



If we turn to the plate, figure 5 (it is magnified a dozen times) shows the 

 seed of the normal form like a minute maize-cob, the individual " grains " 

 corresponding to minute transverse roughnesses. In variety asper the seeds 

 are quite free from these roughnesses. 



In other words, the ordinary Sow Thistle, which is quite a smooth plant, 

 has rough " seeds " or achenes, while the variety asper, rough or prickly as 

 its name denotes, has smooth seeds. 



Its Economic Value. This is a plant known to everyone who keeps birds. 

 The singing birds at once eat the underneath portion of the flower, particu- 

 larly if it is going to seed, and so does the tame cockatoo, while a handful 

 thrown to the fowls is at -once devoured, and no growing plant of it is ever 

 seen in the fowlyard. It has some slight food value for. stock. 



There is little fibre in it, and, so far as I am aware, there is no deleterious, 

 property of any kind in this weed. 



Leichhardt, in his " Overland Journey to Port Essington," says that the 

 young shoots make an excellent vegetable, and on more than one occasion 

 I have known it to be boiled and used for food when vegetables are scarce. 

 It is, however, only a stop-gap, and certainly not a rival of spinach and 

 cabbage. 



An Alien. Bentham speaks of it as "a weed of cultivation, probably in- 

 digenous to Europe and temperate Asia, but now distributed over the 

 greater part of the globe, and perhaps truly indigenous in Australia." 



It is now found in many districts in all the States. 



It occurs near the water's edge in most countries, and sometimes is found 

 in places where there is scarcely an introduced plant competing with the 

 native vegetation. Hence the difficulty, in any particular country, of saying 

 that it is an alien. In Australia it has spread, during historic times, in 

 many localities in which it is now abundant, but, so far as we know, it 

 existed in Australia before the advent of the white man. Hence some 

 botanists look upon it as indigenous, but, bearing in mind its facility of 

 migration (its seeds can be blown across the water for great distances), its 

 colonising power, and the fact that it is not specially Australian in its 

 relationships, it is better, I think, to look upon it as introduced. 



How to get rid of it. It is a weed of cultivation ; it becomes a " nuis- 

 ance " ; it interferes with the orderly appearance of the tidy garden, and 

 hence it chiefly offends the aesthetic sense. It contains no trace of poison. 



Wherever ground is broken up, or there is a holding place for ever so 

 little soil the Sow Thistle may establish itself. It is an annual, and the 

 only way to get rid of it is to pull it up before it matures its seeds. It is, 

 however, very difficult to control; I have known an area apparently com- 

 pletely free from it one year, sown thick with it the next, the seed having 

 come we know not whence, carried by the wind, helped by the thistle-down. 



It is only in a garden that one desires to get rid of it, and I recommend 

 no method other than hand-pulling. 



