CALIFORNIA PLANTS IN THEIR HOMES 



Fig. 72, is nearly related to the thistle; it is often called 

 the yellow star thistle ; another common name for it is the 

 prickly tar-weed, and its Spanish name is tocalote. The 

 plants spring up in winter, but it is not until early summer 

 that they become most troublesome. To the disagree- 

 able qualities of tar-weed they add extremely numerous 

 and prickly flower heads. In pastures they are a great 

 pest, driving out all valuable vegetation. In the central 

 and northern portions of the state, this weed is most abun- 

 dant and vigorous, maturing sometimes three crops of seeds 

 from May to December. In the south it is usually confined 

 to hillsides, but its place, as a pasture and wayside weed, 

 is fully supplied by an equally objectionable foreigner, the 

 hoarhound. The hoarhound has some virtue as a remedy 

 for colds, but it monopolizes valuable pasture lands, and as 

 a wayside weed is most exasperating; one's clothing, brush- 

 ing ever so lightly against it, comes away covered with its 

 fruits, enclosed in their little, sharp-pointed, gray calyxes. 

 Other wayside weeds, the cocklebur, all over the state, 

 and the Spanish needle in the south, have the same un- 

 pleasant method of compelling us to distribute their seeds. 

 We have a native "Jimson" weed, which has all the bad 

 habits of its foreign companions. Nettles have still another 

 way of making themselves disagreeable. Other foreign 

 weeds that live along our . waysides, and thence invade 

 orchards and gardens, are the sow-thistle, sometimes 

 called milkweed, the pigweed, dock, knotweed, tumble- 

 weed, and the like; humble, homely plants all of them, as 

 their names imply. Yet few of us would complain that 

 nature is so ready to cover neglected places with life and 

 growth. It is not possible to explain fully the hardiness 

 of these weeds; most of them are able, when trodden or cut 

 down, to send out at once vigorous new shoots, and they 

 have various devices for meeting dangers from drought 

 and grazing animals; but their greatest strength probably 



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