242 LEGUMINOSAE (PULSE FAMILY) 



standard, narrow, oblong wings, and keel tipped with a sharp, pro- 

 jecting point. (Fig. 172.) Pods sessile, imperfectly two-celled, very 

 firm and leathery, densely hairy, long-pointed, and filled with small 

 seeds which loosen and rattle about in the pods as they become dry. 



Means of control 



Like the preceding plant, White Loco-weed can be killed by deep 

 cutting from the root, well below the crown as was demonstrated 

 by a Montana ranchman who lost three hundred lambs out of a 

 herd of two thousand in one season from Loco poisoning ; the next 

 year, while the plants were in bloom in May and June he hired two 

 men to dig up the Loco-weeds on an area four miles square, the 

 tools used being heavy, narrow, and very sharp steel hoes ; the 

 plants never sprouted again and no further losses from Loco 

 occurred on his ranch. 



WILD LIQUORICE 



Glycyrrhlza lepidota, Pursh. 



Other English name: Sweet-root. 



Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by rootstocks. 



Time of bloom : May to August. 



Seed-time: July to October. 



Range: Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota, to Hudson Bay, west- 

 ward to British Columbia and Washington, and southward to 

 Missouri, New Mexico, and California. 



Habitat : Open prairies ; fields, meadows, and pastures. 



Its hooked pods make this plant very obnoxious to western wool- 

 growers, and it is a weed that is exceedingly hard to destroy. 

 The rootstocks are long, thick, creeping, stored with sweet juices, 

 whence it is called Sweet-root, a translation of the Greek generic 

 name. These thick, juicy, deep-lying roots enable it to withstand 

 drought and recover from much cutting and grazing. Stems erect, 

 branching, one to three feet high, usually scurfy with fine scales. 

 Leaves long-petioled, odd-pinnate, with eleven to nineteen oblong, 

 pointed leaflets, entire, bristle-tipped, and specked with minute 

 scales or dots, being scurfy when young and dotted when old. 

 Flowers densely crowded on axillary spikes, shorter than the 



