442 COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 



Time of bloom : Late March to June. 



Seed-time: June to July. 



Range: Labrador to Nebraska, southward to Georgia and Texas. 



Habitat : Dry soil ; open woods, upland pastures. 



These plants have dioecious flowers and their stoloniferous 

 habit causes them to form broad, dense patches, the fertile and 

 sterile groups commonly distinct but very neighborly. Root- 

 leaves tufted in a small rosette, obovate 

 to spatulate, obtuse, three-ribbed, taper- 

 ing to petioles, softly white-woolly on 

 both sides but more so beneath ; leaves of 

 old plants sometimes become smooth on 

 the upper surface ; stem-leaves few, 

 small, and sessile. Stems at first very 

 short but often lengthening to a height 

 of six inches or a foot, the fertile plants 

 being much the taller. Heads in small 

 corymbose clusters, each head less than 

 a quarter-inch broad, the pistillate ones 

 showing two-cleft, crimson styles and 

 when in fruit having the more copious 

 pappus ; bracts of the involucre dry and 

 scarious, those of the fertile heads pur- 

 plish brown at base, with narrow white 

 tips, those of the staminate heads with 

 FIG. 307. Plantain- broad white petal-like tips. After fruit- 

 i-ft *e plants spend their energies for 

 the remainder of the growing season in 

 sending out runners with young plants at the tips, which take 

 root and extend the size of the patches. Cattle leave the plant 

 unmolested, and in dry fields and pastures it sometimes "runs 

 out" much of the grass. (Fig. 307.) 



Means of control 



Disk-harrow, fertilize and reseed the hilly pastures in the fall, 

 first removing the thickest patches of the weed by hoe-cutting. 

 Cultivation and rotation with clover is the best remedy for ground 

 not so hilly as to be in danger of washing. 



