BOSACEAE (ROSE FAMILY) 209 



The weed springs from a slender taproot, fringed with many 

 thready rootlets. Leaves thickly tufted, spreading, six to eighteen 

 inches long, pinnately compound with seven to twenty-five oblong, 

 tooth-edged leaflets, the larger ones at the tip, decreasing in size 

 inward to the long, grooved petiole, dark green and smooth above 

 but underneath white with fine, silken hairs. Thrust out from 

 among the tufted leaves are a number of jointed runners, one to 

 three feet long, the young plants sitting on the nodes until the 

 parent has pushed them out a convenient distance for striking root 

 and starting an independent growth. Flowers solitary, lifted on 

 slender, erect, axillary peduncles, bright yellow, nearly an inch 

 broad ; calyx-lobes acute, silky-hairy ; these fold over the seed- 

 heads until the smooth, small achenes have ripened, when they 

 reopen and the nodding stems scatter them abroad. 



Means of control 



Good drainage is all that is necessary in 

 order to drive out the Silverweed, but in 

 places where that is impracticable the plants 

 should be closely cut in June, before the 

 first seeds fall or any runners have taken root. 



COMMON CINQUEFOIL OR FIVE-FINGER 

 Potentilla canadensis, L. 



Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and 

 by stolons. 



Time of bloom: April to August. 



Seed-time: June to September. 



Range : Maine and Quebec to Minnesota, south- 

 ward to Georgia and Oklahoma. 



Habitat : Dry soil ; fields, meadows, pastures, 

 and waste places. 



Stems tufted, spreading, stoloniferous, six 

 inches to two feet long, very slender, the 

 runners thin as wire, often reddish, finely mon < j 1 J i 1 ier 

 hairy. Leaves palmately five-foliate, the tentilla canadensis). 

 leaflets oblong obovate, green and smooth x i 



