150 What is a Weed? 



great a pest as couch-grass, at least atones to a 

 certain extent by the sheets of pure yellow which it 

 spreads across the midsummer landscape hardly 

 less pleasing than the poppies' fiercer red. Both 

 plants are particularly aggressive on the light 

 soils of the open fields on the chalk downs, where 

 the vast ranges of the landscape allow their brilliant 

 squares and stripes to be conspicuous at a great 

 distance. On a drizzling and misty day of June 

 the yellow charlock blossom, smouldering through 

 the vapours that cloud the hill, is often even more 

 striking than on fine, sunny days, when its contrast 

 with the rest of nature is less acute. The length 

 of time during which most plant-seeds can lie 

 dormant is still uncertain ; and the stories of 

 seeds found in Egyptian or Roman tombs having 

 germinated after thousands of years seem always 

 to have proved false when accurately investigated. 

 But many seeds will lie dormant in the soil for 

 a long term of years, when the conditions of culture 

 are changed from tillage to pasture or from pasture 

 to woodland ; and both the poppy and the charlock 

 have given such proofs of vitality. 



No display of blossom in England is brighter 

 to the eye than a cornfield, either blazing with the 

 pure colour of massed poppy or charlock heads, or 

 dappled with their mingled scarlet and yellow, and 

 with blue cornflowers, pink corn-cockles, and tall 

 white campion. Such a field can now and then 

 be met with in early summer on light soils, and is 

 a delight to everyone but its owner. Many other 

 plants which chiefly occur as cornfield weeds are 



