RreseDACE&®.—GERANIACE®.—HvPpERICACE. 17 
character, and can be treated in the same way. The flowers are usually 
white or pale yellow. The ordinary form is annual, but a maritime form 
(var. maritimum) is found on the sea coasts, and is usually biennial, with 
more divided leaves, longer pods, and yellower flowers. Its fodder value 
is zl, and it becomes a troublesome weed of cultivation if once allowed to: 
seed freely. 
RESEDACE2 (MIGNONETTE FamILy). 
Reseda Luteola, ZL. The Wild or Dyer’s Rocket. A native of Europe 
and Asia. It is occasionally found, probably introduced with impure 
seed, but is not very injurious. The plant is an annual or biennial and 
easily kept under. It appears to have taken firm hold of some shires, and 
is apt to spread in neglected pastures. 
GERANIACEZ (GERANIUM FAMILY). 
An order of herbs or low shrubs, widely distributed over the globe, with 
five partite flowers, and the leaves usually more or less divided. 
Two of the Storksbills, Krodium cicutarium, L’Herit., and £. mos- 
chatum, L’Herit., are natives of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and are fairly 
common in parts. They are to a slight extent useful as low grade pasture 
plants, especially on dry soils. The musk Erodium often smells so 
strongly as to be quite obnoxious to stock, especially when growing near the 
sea. Both plants are usually annual or biennial, with a deep stout tap 
root. 
Oxalis cernua, Thunb. The South African Wood Sorrel. It js a 
highly obnoxious weed, especially in gardens. It prefers slightly sour 
soil, and though it likes moisture, tides over drought by the aid of its 
underground parts. These produce bulbils freely, and since the seed is 
also abundant the plant is difficult to eradicate. Drainage and liming 
followed by manuring, and coupled with a scarifying of the surface and 
the encouragement of the larger pasture plants, are usually sufficient to 
practically suppress it on pasture land infested by it. On agricultural 
land clean cultivation and a season or two of root-crops, potatoes or leafy 
fodder crops are advisable. The plant readily spreads in again from 
roadsides, waste places, and the borders of fields if these are left foul. 
Although the leaves are nutritious and have been used as a vegetable, they 
are too acid to form good fodder and are usually untouched by stock. 
HypericacE& (St. JoHn’s Wort Famity). 
A small but widely distributed order of practically no economic value, 
but containing one of our most troublesome weeds in certain districts. The 
order includes shrubs and trees as well as herbs, but the flowers are easily 
distinguished by the stamens being grouped in three or five bundles (or 
very numerous) with a central capsule more or less divided into three or 
five segments. 
Hypericum perforatum, L. St. John’s Wort. The perennial stock has 
deeply penetrating roots (two to over four feet) and forms short runners and 
erect stems one to over four feet in height in Victoria, whereas in England 
the stems rarely attain two feet. They are glabrous, cylindrical, or with 
two opposite angles. Leaves unstalked, oblong, about half an inch long, with 
semi-transparent dots and often a few black dots on the under side, usually 
the whole plant, with a bluish-green tinge. Flowers bright yellow, in 
terminal clusters. Sepals pointed, entire petals twice as long and with 
black dots, also on the anthers. Stamens numerous in three bundles, 
capsule opening in three valves, and with numerous small seeds. ; 
