48 : ASCLEPIADACEA. 
Care should also be taken to use only clean seed. Indeed, the sale of seed 
containing dodder should be a severely punishable offence. 
Infested clover or lucerne should not be fed to stock, as seeds may be 
voided unaffected in the manure, and reinfect new ground. Above all, 
good cultivation in the widest sense should prevail, and all fields, hedges 
and ditches should be kept clean and free from weeds, especially legumin- 
ous ones. Dodder also grows on St. John’s Wort and other weeds but 
usually not on Composite. It has recently been found doing serious 
damage to potatoes. 
Several native species of Cassytha (Lauracee) are often mistaken for 
dodders which they closely resemble in habit and external appearance, 
and are called scrub or bush dodder. They mainly grow on native 
plants, herbs, shrubs or even trees, especially near the sea, but are not 
agricultural pests like the true dodders, though like them they have no 
assimilating leaves, and obtain food from the host plants on which they 
grow by means of their attaching suckers. 
Cassytha is a coarser plant than the true dodder (Cuscuta), the fruits 
larger, less fleshy, not as densely clustered and each one enclosed by a 
closely investing calyx barely open at the top. 
The common introduced dodder (Cuscuta epithymum, L.) is proclaimed 
for the whole State (June, 1908). 
Convolvulus arvensis, L, Bindweed. A perennial with annual twin- 
ing stems, arrow-shaped leaves, and rather pretty pinkish flowers. The 
plant is one of the later introductions, and is very troublesome in culti- 
vated ground. Its twining stems choke the plants to which it attaches 
itself, and its creeping underground stems. render it difficult to eradicate, 
since quite small pieces will start fresh growths, and the stems are often a 
foot below the surface. The weed is especially troublesome in light friable 
soils and in corn crops. Badly infected land should be deeply ploughed, 
and the underground stems harrowed or raked out. Where patches are 
present they should be forked out. The free use of the hoe in spring, 
and the growth of a leafy fodder or a root crop well encouraged by 
manure, will help to keep down the plant and prevent its flowering. 
The seeds have a very prolonged vitality in the soil, and hence the pre- 
vention of flowering and seeding is very important. &° The plant is less 
mechanically dangerous on pastures, but the leaves are bitter, the under- 
ground stems purgative and the seeds (four in each rounded capsule) are 
poisonous to stock if eaten in any quantity. Rotation farming, coupled 
with occasional bare fallowing, aids in keeping down a weed of this kind. 
Great care should be taken to avoiding introducing it with impure seed, as 
has commonly occurred during the past. _ Its dark, somewhat triangular, 
and roughened seeds are easily recognised. When ground in flour they 
spoil its colour, and render it injurious if present in any quantity. 
Proclaimed for the whole State, June, 1908. 
ASCLEPIADACEZ (ASCLEPIAS F aMILy). 
A small order of plants with milky juice often acrid or poisonous, and 
usually slender climbing or prostrate stems. 
hs Gomphocarpus fruticosus, R. Br. Introduced from South Africa. 
Tt is spread throughout the warmer regions of the globe and is an exceedingly 
variable species, but of little economic value. The hairs of the fruit have 
been used for filling pillows, cushions, mattresses, &c., as a substitute for 
kapok, but the quantity in each pod is small, and the fibre is too short and 
