322 



CONVOLVULACKAE (CONVOLVULUS FAMILY) 



Time of bloom: June throughout the summer. 



Seed-time: August until cut off by frost. 



Range: Nova Scotia to Manitoba, southward to Virginia, Missouri, 



and Kansas. 

 Habitat : Rich soil ; fields, meadows, and waste places. 



A most obnoxious weed, spreading chiefly by means of its long, 

 creeping, cord-like roots, which at any part of their length may 

 bud new plants. Stems smooth, slightly 

 angled, slender, one to three feet long, twin- 

 ing about and over any plant within reach, 

 robbing it of air and light while the roots 

 below are starving it of food and moisture. 

 Leaves alternate, halberd-shaped, with back- 

 ward-pointing lobes at the base, on slender 

 petioles. Flowers pink, sometimes nearly 

 white, funnel-shaped, about an inch across, 

 usually but one or two on each slender pe- 

 duncle, but occasionally three or four ; calyx 

 not bracted at the base as in the following 

 species, but there are two small scale-like 

 bracts, some distance below, on the peduncle. 

 Capsules globular, two-celled, usually four- 

 seeded. Seeds dark brown, about one-eighth 

 of an inch long, pear-shaped, rough, with one 

 side flat and the other rounded ; too frequently 

 an impurity of other seeds. (Fig. 224.) 



FIG. 224. Field Means of control 

 Bindweed (Convolvulus 



arvensis). xj. ^ ow cfeofi seed. Put the ground under 



clean cultivation for two years ; the infested 

 land should be deeply plowed and as many as possible of the 

 whip-cord roots harrowed out or raked out and destroyed, or 

 they may be fed to pigs ; but each bit left in the soil will start 

 new growth and tillage must be so frequent and so thorough that 

 no green leaves are permitted to feed these roots. Where it is 

 practicable to grow alfalfa, this crop tends to smother the Bind- 

 weed with its thick cover and the frequent cutting checks leaf 

 growth of the weed and prevents seeding. Or infested land may 



