WEEDS. 23 



WEEDS. 



If we accept the definition, a weed is a plant out of 

 place, almost any plant may become a weed. On the 

 other hand, almost every weed can become an eco- 

 nomic plant. Some one has wittily said that " the 

 weed is the devil's flower." Most weeds certainly 

 play mischief with a crop ; they are ever present, 

 springing up, it seems, spontaneously to take up the 

 available fertilizer that was intended for the crop, 

 thus leaving the young seedlings in a sickly and weak 

 condition, unfit to combat with insects and other 

 diseases. 



Dr. B. D. Halsted, Horticulturist of New Jersey Ex- 

 periment Station, has shown very clearly that weeds 

 harbor diseases of crops. Some of the plant diseases 

 are carried through the winter by weeds which nourish 

 the spores that attack the crop in the spring. Other 

 weeds act simply as harbors of insects, which leave 

 the weed as soon as more refined food can be found. 

 Poke weed is a prolific source of root-knot ; fire- 

 weed multiplies tomato blight ; pepper grass harbors 

 club root ; and so we might continue for a long time 

 to enumerate the diseases of crops that will grow on 

 weeds. Another pernicious effect of weeds is the un- 

 tidy appearance they present when allowed to grow. 

 When dry they invite fire and are often the road to 

 the destruction of much property. 



