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VALERIANACEAE (VALERIAN FAMILY) 



CORN SALAD 



Valerianella Locusta, Beteke. 



Other English names: Lamb's Lettuce, Milk Grass. 



Introduced. Annual or winter annual. Propagates by 



Time of bloom: April to July. 



Seed-time: June to September. 



Range: Maine to Ontario, and southward to Virginia. 



Habitat: Old fields, meadows, and waste places. 



This plant is an immigrant from Europe and an escape from 

 gardens, where it was cultivated for salads and greens under the 

 names of Fetticus, Veticost, and White 

 Potherb. It is very hardy, enduring cold 

 so well that in mild climates or mild 

 winters it can be gathered and used 

 throughout that season, a quality that 

 helps it to survive many hardships as 

 a weed. (Fig. 281.) 



Stems six inches to a foot high, 

 branching by repeated forking. Leaves 

 opposite, pale green, succulent, tender, 

 the lower ones growing in a tuft about 

 the base of the stalk, blunt-pointed or 

 rounded at the tips, tapering toward 

 the base; stem-leaves sessile, smaller, 

 and more pointed. Flowers very tiny, 

 growing in small, flat clusters hardly a 

 half-inch broad ; the corollas pale blue 

 or violet, funnel form, with five spread- 

 ing unequal lobes ; stamens usually three, 

 and style with three-lobed stigma. 

 Seeds very small, contained in a three- 

 celled capsule of which two cells are 

 r "-S^S^. <r " always empty. Another species six to 

 eighteen inches tall with white flowers, 



known as the BEAKED CORN SALAD (Valerianella radiata, Dufr.), 

 ranges from Massachusetts to Minnesota and southward to Texas 

 and Florida, infesting low meadows and other moist soils. Cattle 



