PLATE 4.4. 



CURLED DOCK, Rumex crispus, L. 

 Other English names : Yellow Dock, Sour Dock. 



(Noxious : Dom.) 



Introduced. Perennial, with a very deep tap-root. Stem 2 to 3 feet, 

 smooth, erect, terminating in wand-like racemes. Root-leaves oblong-lance- 

 olate in outline with much crested or waved margins, 6 to ]2 inches long, 

 on long petioles; stem-leaves on short petioles and much smaller or absent 

 towards the top of the stems. Flowers small, in rather widely separated 

 clusters around the stems. The 3 inner segments of the calyx enlarging as 

 the seed ripens, heart-shaped, with the margin entire or obscurely toothed, 

 all with grain-like tubercles on the outside. Seed (achene) [Plate 56, fig. 

 76 natural size and enlarged 4 times], T V of an inch long, shaped like a 

 miniature beech-nut, dark brown, shining. 



Time of Flowering : June ; seeds ripe July. 



Propagation : By seeds. Clumps increasing slowly by shoots from the 

 crowns of old plants. 



Occurrence: In fields and waste places. Naturalized from Atlantic to 

 Pacific, very abundant in Southern and Western Ontario. 



Injury : A common weed in meadows and pastures, and also abundant 

 by roadsides, whence the seeds blow on to cultivated land. The seeds are a 

 common impurity in grass and clover seeds. 



Remedy : Land worked under a short rotation is never badly infested 

 by docks. In clover meadows all plants seen should be spudded out. This 

 is easily done when the land is soft after rain. 



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