CARYOPHYLLACEAE (PINK FAMILY) 



149 



Range: New Brunswick and Ontario southward to New Jersey, 



Illinois, and Iowa. 

 Habitat : Moist soil ; fields, meadows, roadsides, and waste places. 



A beautiful flower, but also a very pernicious weed. Stems 

 thickly tufted, six inches to two feet in height, pale green, smooth 

 and glaucous; some stems of each tuft are 

 flowerless but bear many leaves that assimi- 

 late food for storage in the rootstocks. 



Leaves rather thick in texture and glau- 

 cous, obiong, pointed, the upper ones often 

 meeting around the stems, the lower ones 

 usually spatulate, narrowing to margined 

 petioles. Flowers in loose, open panicles, 

 on slender pedicels, white, drooping, each 

 blossom about a half -inch broad, the five 

 petals deeply cleft, and ten long stamens 

 out-thrust, tipped with brown anthers ; styles 

 three ; calyx pale green, very much inflated, 

 beautifully veined, sometimes with pinkish 

 purple, sometimes with markings of deeper 

 green. Capsule broadly ovoid, opening with 

 five recurved teeth. Seed rounded kidney- 

 shaped, brown, roughened with fine tuber- campion (Silme tt- 

 cles. (Fig. 100.) folia), xi 



Means of control 



Prevent seed production. Cut the stalks from the roots well 

 below the crowns, with hoe, spud, or broad-bladed cultivator, so 

 frequently that little or no sustenance may be given the creeping 

 rootstocks. If the infested ground is in meadow it should be 

 broken up and put to cultivated crops, well tilled for two or more 

 seasons. 



BOUNCING BET 

 Saponaria officinalis, L. 



Other English names: Soapwort, Scourwort, Fuller's Herb, Old 

 Maid's Pink, Hedge Pink, Sweet Betty, Wild Sweet William, 

 Lady-by-the-Gate, London Pride. 



