86 



bark stands out in pleasing contrast with the darker hued trunks 

 about them. Many of them are exceptionally well formed 

 with full foliage. Their delicacy of forms calls to mind Lowell 's 

 admirable tribute: 



"Their shadow^ scarce seems shade, their pattering leaflets 

 Sprinkle their gathered sunshine o'er my senses 

 And Nature gives me all her summer confidences." 



New York City 



A NEW WEED FROM OREGON 



James C. Nelson 



In the summer of 1920, Mr. William L. Teutsch, County 

 Agricultural Agent for Lake County, Oregon, sent to the her- 

 barium of the Oregon Agricultural College at Corvallis, specimens 

 of a weed which had been found growing in great profusion 

 in a field of alfalfa on the Lerwick ranch, three quarters of a 

 mile north of Lakeview. Dr. Helen M. Gilkey, Curator of the 

 College herbarium, kindly distributed some of these specimens 

 among the other Oregon botanists. The plant was evidently 

 a labiate, and a consultation of Bentham & Hooker's Genera 

 Plantarum seemed to place it in Salvia; but it was beyond our 

 powers to determine it among the six hundred and more species 

 of that vast genus. We accordingly appealed to the Gray and 

 National Herbaria, and our plant w^as identified at both of these 

 institutions as Salvia Aethiopis L., sometimes known as "African 

 sage," a species previously unknown in Oregon. 



Mr. Teutsch WTites that the plant was not only very abundant 

 in the heavy loam of the alfalfa-field, where it was actually 

 choking out some of the alfalfa plants, but that it had spread 

 to the adjoining (presumably unirrigated) hillside, and was 

 growing in great profusion on a shallow basaltic soil, "indicating 

 that it was a hardy plant and could withstand great drought," 

 the semi-arid climate of Lake County permitting agricultural 

 operations only with the aid of irrigation. It has continued at 

 the same station until the present year (1922); is very prolific 

 and is spreading rapidly. Mr. Teutsch is of the opinion that 

 it may easily become a very noxious weed, though it has not 

 yet appeared at any other station*. It is a tall coarse plant, 



* Since writing this it has been foundby Prof. M. E. Peck, at Gossil, Wheeler 

 Co., about 200 miles north of the Lake Co. station 



