What is a Weed? 149 



a cornfield every plant is a weed except the corn ; 

 and since cornfields are more exposed than gardens 

 to all the wild influences of the surrounding country, 

 their tale of weeds is a large one, and includes many 

 flowers which are favourites with every one except 

 the farmer. The most distinguished cornfield weed 

 is, perhaps, the poppy, which is unique among our 

 native flowers for its bright scarlet colour, and is 

 only too fond of cornfields on sandy or chalky 

 soils. Yet poppies are hardly so mischievous as 

 their profusion in many places would suggest ; 

 for although they often fill a cornfield so full of 

 blossom that at a little distance it appears one 

 sheet of red, they have no great power of strangling 

 or overshadowing the corn. The first place in the 

 roll of evil is occupied by that ignoble pest the 

 couch-grass, which brightens the landscape with no 

 flower worth mention, and in arable or garden 

 ground is seldom seen above the surface, but chokes 

 and exhausts the soil with its network of creeping 

 root-stocks. Another brilliant cornfield weed is 

 the blue cornflower, or bluebottle, which is locally 

 abundant in certain districts. But it is almost 

 unknown in England on richer or damper land, 

 and is rare enough in most parts of the country 

 to have gained the right of inclusion in flower 

 gardens. It provides one of their most beautiful 

 pictures, when the goldfinches hang on the nodding 

 stems to pick the ripening seeds, flashing their 

 barred wings and crimson caps against the bright 

 blue blossoms. 



Charlock, or wild mustard, which is almost as 



