KNOT WEED (Polygonum bistortoides,Pwsh.). The common 

 smartweed of old truck-patches and roadsides the country 

 over is represented on the Pacific Slope by a pretty cousin, the 

 Alpine Smartweed, or Knotweed, frequent in wet meadows 

 of the higher mountain ranges. In summer, campers and 

 trampers come upon acres of it forming unbroken sheets of 

 creamy white color in the damp sunny openings of the forests 

 of the San Bernardino Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and 

 northward, as well as eastward to the Rockies. The small 

 white or rosy, pediceled flowers are disposed in dense spike-like 

 racemes f to 1| inches long, on stems 1 to 2 feet high. The 

 leaves are mostly basal, but a few are on the stem, grass-like 

 and sheathing about the swollen stem-joints which are a char- 

 acteristic feature of the Polygonums. 



The specific name P. bistortoides, meaning like a bistorta, has 

 reference to the resemblance of our plant to a species of Poly- 

 gonum of very wide distribution called Bistort by Old World 

 herbalists, from its tortuous and twisted roots. 



