PLATE 40. 



LAMB'S-QUARTERS, Chenopodium album, L. 



other English names : Pigweed, Fat-hen, White Goosefoot. 



Introduced and native. Annual. Extremely variable in every char- 

 acter. Mostly a tall succulent herbaceous annual with a slender, erect, 

 grooved, much branched stem, 2 to 6 feet high, with angular-ovate, pale 

 green, coarsely toothed leaves, narrowed at the base and borne on slender 

 foot-stalks. Flowers in compound spikes from the axils of the leaves; whole 

 plant more or less covered with white or pink mealy particles. Plants found 

 late in the season are of a much darker green colour and have the leaves less 

 angled. Seed [Plate 54, fig. 35 — natural size and enlarged 8 times] about 

 iTij of an inch, circular in outline, more or less flattened on one side, 

 strongly convex on the other; edges bluntly rounded; the lower convex 

 face grooved from the margin to the central scar; seed shining black, minutely 

 wrinkled, enclosed in a very thin papery seed vessel, called a utricle. The 

 seeds, as found among crop seeds, have this thin seed vessel closely adheriPL- 

 to the seed as a brown or gray mealy deposit, which gives them a granular- 

 roughened appearance ; they also often have the dried 5-angled calyx closed 

 tightly over them. When plants are picked or shaken roughly after the 

 seeds are ripe, but while the plant is still green, the seeds fall out of the 

 calyx very easily. Some seeds may also be found in screenings of grain, 

 from which the brittle black coat has been partially broken away, when the 

 yellow rinjr-like embryo will be seen surrounding the darker central portion 

 of the seed. 



A much larger seed, j-^ of an inch in diameter, of exactly the same 

 appearance as the above, and which is sometimes found in crop seeds 

 with it, is that of the Maple-leaved Goosefoot, Chenopodium liyhridum, L. 



Time of Flowering and Seeding : From June to frost. 



Propagation : By seed. 



Occurrence: Everj'where, in rich land. 



Injury : A gross feeiler and a vigorous rapid grower, which in seasons 

 favourable to its growth crowds and chokes out growing crops. Seed very 

 abundant in all kinds of commercial seeds. 



Remedy : Harrowing growing crops of cereals when the grain plants are 

 three inches high will destroy myriads of the young seedlings of this and 

 all other annual weeds among grain, which have germinated in the top 1 or 2 

 inches of soil, without injury to the much deeper-rooted drilled-in grain. 

 When the plants are in small numbers or in clover grown for seed, pull by 

 hand. Late plants growing in hned crops should be carefully destroyed to 

 jircvent the seed from falling. 



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