BUCKWHEAT FAMILY 



POLYGONACEAE 



WOOD KNOTWEED 



Polygonum 'virginianum L. 



The Buckwheat family is quite large and contains the 

 cultivated Buckwheat and all of the Docks and Smart- 

 weeds as well as the plants included here. 



There are many kinds of Knotweeds, 

 a number of which grow in dry 

 places and others in wet. The Wood 

 Knotweed, however, grows as a rule 

 only in woods and thickets. It is 

 found from Nova Scotia to Minne- 

 sota and south to Florida and Texas, 

 and blooms from July to November. 



The stem is 1-4 feet tall and 

 mostly smooth. It may be unbranch- 

 ed or with a few branches above the 

 middle. It is swollen at the joints, 

 and the leaf stipules form cylindrical 

 sheaths about the joints. These 

 sheaths are hairy and fringed at the 

 top with short bristles. 



The flowers are borne on a long 

 slender spike. There is no corolla 

 but the greenish white calyx, which 

 is unequally 4-parted, is somewhat 

 corollalike. There are s stamens and 

 I pistil with 2 long styles. The fruit 

 is an akene which is dark brown or 

 creamy, smooth and shining. 



The plant has an interesting 

 method of scattering its fruits. When 

 mature these are reflexed on the 

 spike, the persistent styles becoming curved and rigid. If the 

 ends of the styles are touched with the finger, or by an animal 

 or any object, the fruit suddenly hops off from the spike like a 

 bug from a stick and may fall several feet away. 



There flames the first gay daffodil 

 Whore wiuter-long the snows have lain. 



Daffodils — Ruth Guthrie Harding 



78 



