100 THE 1XDIAXA WEED BOOK. 



ing with the evening sunshine in the brightness of their hue. Those 

 of the former open only in late after-noon, but if the next day be 

 cloudy or they are in the shade they often remain open until noon. 

 They have a pleasing fragrance and by it attract unto themselves 

 many night-flying moths. It is one of the few native weeds which 

 has found its way to Europe in exchange for the many they have 

 sent to us, and is said to be commonly cultivated in many English 

 flower gardens. The first year it produces only a rosette of root 

 leaves and is, there fore, a weed mostly in stubble or in crops sown 

 in autumn, being especially notable in thinly seeded clover fields. 

 Remedies: pulling, cutting or spudding in summer before the 

 seeds ripen or in late autumn after the rosettes appear : burning 

 mature plants; cultivation with hoed crops. When mown it is 

 apt to stool and send up later stalks. Several successive mowings 

 will, however, get rid of it. 



The young shoots and roots of the evening-primrose are eaten 

 as a salad in Germany. A tea made from the leaves is, in the 

 eastern States, mush used for dysentery, cholera morbus and other 

 summer diseases of the bowels. Tn the East and South the young 

 roots are also grated fine and mixed with fresh lard, butter or tal- 

 low to form a salve for burns, scalds, bunions, boils, felons, ery- 

 sipelas, cuts, bruises, etc. In the South this salve is known as 

 ''King's cure-all" and by the negroes is used even for snake bites. 

 The blossoms pla,ced in water form a mucilage excellent for sore 



THE PARSLEY OR CARROT FAMILY. UMBELLIFER^B. 



Herbs usually with hollow stems and alternate, mostly com- 

 pound leaves the stalks of which art 1 often dilated at base. Flowers 

 small, white, yellow, greenish or purple, borne in compound or 

 simple umbels (Fig. 13, e, g) ; calyx tube wholly united to the 

 ovary, its top truncate or with 5 small teeth ; petals 5, inserted on 

 the margin of the calyx; stamens 5, borne on the disk that forms 

 the top of the ovary; ovary 2-celled, with 1 ovule in each cavity. 

 Fruit composed of 2 seed-like dry carpels which are flattened or 

 cylindrical and marked lengthwise with ribs, 



A large and very difficult family some members of which have 

 very poisonous roots or herbage. The flowers are much alike in 

 all and the leaves very diversified, even in the same genus, so that 

 the mature fruit is necessary for correct determination of the spe- 

 cies. There are usually oil tubes in the fruit and the odor of cara- 



*Vasey, "Reporfof U. r S. Botanist," 1887, 311. 



