PAP 'AVERAGE 'AE (POPPY FAMILY) 169 



The peasant farmers of Europe, long before science had ex- 

 plained " the reason why," were very certain that wheat fields would 

 be smitten with rust if Barberry bushes grew near by, and insisted 

 on their extirpation. Doctor William Darlington, in his most 

 instructive book on "American Weeds and Useful Plants" pub- 

 lished in 1847, sarcastically mentions that "It was formerly a 

 popular belief and one that prevails yet to some extent, that the 

 Barberry possesses the power of blasting grain ; the fallacy of this 

 idea has been proved." But popular belief was right, nevertheless, 

 for it is now known that the wheat-rust fungus (Puccinia graminis) 

 passes one stage of its life on the leaves of the Barberry. 



The plant is a shrub, four to eight feet high ; leaves alternate or 

 fascicled, one to two inches long, obovate, obtuse, thick, smooth, 

 bristly-toothed, growing in the axils of small, three-forked spines. 

 Flowers in pendulous racemes, yellow, each with six roundish sepals, 

 six petals, upcurved and with two small glands at the base, six 

 stamens, sensitive, springing up against the stigma when touched. 

 Fruit an oblong, scarlet berry ; birds eat the fruit and void the seeds 

 in thickets and along the fences, which accounts for the frequency of 

 the plants in such places. (Fig. 115.) 



Means of control 



Plants that menace the grain fields should be grubbed out and 

 destroyed, but in the house grounds or the garden borders there is 

 no shrub more graceful and attractive. 



GREAT CELANDINE 

 Chelidonium mdjus, L. 



Other English names: Swallow-wort, Tetterwort, Felonwort, Wart- 

 weed, Kill-wart, Devil's Milk. 

 Introduced. Biennial. Propagates by seeds. 

 Time of bloom : April to August. 



Seed-time: June to September. v 



Range: Maine to Ontario, southward to Virginia. 

 Habitat: Farmyards, roadsides, waste places, borders of woods. 



Chelidon means a swallow, and it is said that the swallows come 

 with the first opening flower of this plant and go as the last bloom 



