232 A BUNCH OF HERBS. 



Many of our worst weeds are plants that have 

 escaped from cultivation, as the wild radish, which 

 is troublesome in parts of New England, the wild 

 carrot, which infests the fields in eastern New York, 

 and live-forever, which thrives and multiplies under 

 the plow and harrow. In my section an annoying 

 weed is abutilon, or velvet-leaf, also called " old 

 maid," which has fallen from the grace of the gar- 

 den and followed the plow afield. It will manage to 

 mature its seeds if not allowed to start till midsum- 

 mer. 



Of beautiful weeds quite a long list might be 

 made without including any of the so-called wild 

 flowers. A favorite of mine is the little moth mul- 

 lein (Verbascum blatara) that blooms along the high- 

 way, and about the fields, and may be upon the edge 

 of the lawn, from midsummer till frost comes. In 

 winter its slender stalk rises above the snow, bearing 

 its round seed-pods on its pin-like stems, and is pleas- 

 ing even then. Its flowers are yellow or white, large, 

 wheel-shaped, and are borne vertically with filaments 

 loaded with little tufts of violet wool. The plant 

 has none of the coarse, hairy character of the common 

 mullein. Our cone-flower, which one of our poets 

 has called the "brown-eyed daisy," has a pleasing 

 effect when in vast numbers they invade a meadow 

 (if it is not your meadow), their dark brown centres 

 or disks and their golden rays showing conspicu 

 ously. 



Bidens, two-teeth, or "pitch-forks," as the boya 



