COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 



555 



One of the most pernicious weeds that have come to us from 

 Europe, the range of which is widening every year. Grazing 

 animals dislike and reject the plant even when dried in hay, for it is 

 densely hairy in every part and its juices are acrid and bitter. 



Stem six to eighteen inches tall, unbranched, and without leaves 

 except an occasional short bract, very slender, erect, closely set with 

 short, stiff, black hairs, which, in England, 

 gave the weed its name of Grim the Collier. 

 Leaves basal, clustered in rosette form about 

 the stem, oblong to spatulate, obtuse, dark 

 green, hairy on both sides ; this flat, matted 

 growth of leaves chokes out grass or other 

 plants among which the weed is growing. 

 Thrust out from among the leaves are 

 usually several stolons, or runners, with 

 young plants or buds at their tips. Flower- 

 heads in a compact, corymbose cluster, on 

 short, glandular-hairy peduncles, only a few 

 blossoms open at one time, the rest of the 

 bunch being composed of buds in various 

 stages of growth. The heads are about 

 an inch broad when fully open, flaming 

 orange-red, the rays toothed at the tips ; 

 bracts of the involucre imbricated in two 

 or three series, lance-shaped, hairy. Achenes 

 oblong, dark brown, ten-ribbed, with pap- 

 pus a single row of tawny, shining, bristle- 

 like hairs, spread in funnel-form, making 

 parachutes by which the wind distributes 

 them far and wide. (Fig. 384.) 



Means of control 



The roots of this weed are fibrous and spreading and near the 

 surface ; careful cultivation of the ground, particularly with hoed 

 crops, destroys it. But the plant is often a pest of permanent 

 grass lands where cultivation is not desirable ; here the best treat- 

 ment is a liberal application of dry salt, spread broadcast over the 



FIG. 384. Orange 



