THE BORAGE FAMILY 125 



Occurrence: By roadsides and in waste places in eastern 

 Canada. In the West chiefly in corrals and around buildings 

 but spreading into cultivated land, where it is sometimes abun- 

 dant on fields left for summer-fallowing. 



Injury: An objectionable weed in waste places, roadsides 

 and open woodland pastures. Troublesome to sheep on account 

 of the fleeces becoming matted by the burs. A pernicious weed 

 in fields of grain sown on stubble lands in the Prairie Provinces- 

 The plants have a disagreeable odour and are among the few 

 weeds which sheep refuse to eat, although they have been observed 

 to nip off the fresh flowers of this and other members of the 

 same family. 



Remedy: Sow clean seed. Badly infested fields should be 

 summer-fallowed. Thorough spring cultivation with the disc or 

 broad-shared cultivator or shallow plowing is necessary to prevent 

 its abundant occurrence in crops sown on stubble lands. Hand- 

 pull from clover crops. Close cutting when in early bloom will 

 prevent it from seeding, and, if continued from year to year, 

 will ultimately suppress it in pastures and waste places. Occasional 

 plants should be hand-pulled. 



ALLIED SPECIES: Virginian Stickseed (Lajrpula virginiana 

 (L.) Greene) is quite widely distributed in eastern Canada. 

 It is similar in appearance to common Blue Bur and equally 

 objectionable. 



Banks newly quicksetted, some weeding do craue, 



the kindlier nourishment, thereby for to haue: 

 Then after a shewer, to weeding a snatch, 



more easily weed, with the root to dispatch. 



Thomas Tusser, Five Hundreth Pointes of Husbandrie, 1557. 



Herbs of the colder sort die yearly both in Root and Stalk; as Lettice, Purslane; also 

 Wheat and all kind of Com: yet there are some cold Herbs which will last three or four 

 years; as the Violet, Strawberry, Burnet, Primrose, and Sorrel. But Borage and Bugloss, 

 which seem so alike when they are alive, differ in their deaths; for Borage will last but 

 one year, Bugloss will last more. 



Bacon, Natural History, 1625. 



