16 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



pean plant, Hypochaeris radicata, in many ways resembling the 

 fall dandelion (^Leontodon) , has appeared for several years on 

 ballast lands of the Atlantic coast, where it has usually died or 

 been killed out after a year or two in each place. In 1899, how- 

 ever, it appeared in lawns on Penzance and at Wareham, and 

 now it is an abundant weed in parts of New Bedford and Dart- 

 mouth. This is an unfortimate fact, for on our Pacific coast 

 Hypochaeris radicata has become a most troublesome lawn 

 weed, and thei-e is no reason to suppose it will be less aggressive 

 with us. 



The waste from woolen mills is always the source of foreign 

 weeds. The habit at many of our mills has been to establish a 

 waste heap upon which are piled all the tangles which are cut 

 from the wool. This waste is allowed to decay and after it has 

 accumulated it is mixed with other matter and ixsed as a manure. 

 Now, the worst tangles in the wool are generally caused by burs 

 and other rough seeds which have clung to the fleece of the 

 browsing sheep. Consequently, wool waste is in many ways an 

 undesirable fertilizer, for when spread over a field an opportunity 

 is afforded for the seeds which it contains to germinate, and soon 

 there appears a strange and unwelcome crop. Such a field in 

 Tewksbnry, in 1900, produced a crop almost exclusively of two 

 species of storksbill (JErodium), plants which are always fond of 

 traveling in wool. As with ballast plants, a long list could be 

 made of species which appear about wool waste, but the storks- 

 bills will serve as very typical illustrations of this group. 



Since the clearing away of the forests in much of eastern 

 America an opportunit}'^ to spread has been afforded for certain 

 plants which originally grew only in the prairie belt or on the 

 bottom lands of the Mississipiji and other large water courses. 

 These plants, fond of the open country and direct sunlight, are 

 now showing a strong tendency to work eastward into areas 

 which were formerly wooded. The yellow daisy or cone-flower 

 (JRudbeckia hirta) was one of the first of this group to take up 

 the eastward march across New York and New England, but 

 now it has covered this area and extended its pioneer colonies 

 quite to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The jmrple cone-flower 

 {Echinacea pallida) is beginning to appear in our fields, and 



