60 



THE INDIANA WEED BOOK. 



The Lilx- Family.— LILIACEtE. 



Herbs with grass-like leaves, arising usually from bulbs or 

 eorms, rarely from rootstocks or fibrous roots. Flowers solitary or 

 clustered, perfect, the calyx and corolla colored alike and forming a 

 perianth, their six divisions either distinct or more or less united 

 to form a tube; stamens 6. bome on the tube of the perianth or 

 at the base of its segments; ovary 3-celled. Fruit a capsule, open- 

 ing lengthwise. 



As above defined the Lily Family comprises about 1,300 species 

 of widely distributed plants, many of them producing the most 

 showy and graceful of flowers. The different species of trilliums, 

 wake-robins, smilax or green-briers and bellworts, bunch flowers, 

 etc., have been separated by modern botanists to form 3 distinct 

 families, thus greatly decreasing the number formerly included 

 within its bounds. As a result only about 20 species, belonging to 

 the family as limited, grow wild in Indiana. These include the 

 day and wood lilies, wild onions and garlics, adder 's-tongues and 

 wild hyacinths. Of these but one is common and troublesome 

 enough to be termed a weed. 



13. 



Allium vineale L. Wild or Field Garlic. Wild Onion. (A. or B. I. 1.) 



Stem 1-3 feet high, springing from 

 an egg-shaped bulb ; leaves 2-4, nar- 

 rowly linear, hollow, terete, channeled 

 above, borne below the middle of the 

 flowering stem ; the early basal leaves 

 similar, 4-10 inches long. Flowers nu- 

 merous, green or purplish, in a ter- 

 minal erect cluster or umbel, often 

 wholly or in part replaced by small 

 bulblets which are tipped by long hair- 

 like appendages; bracts below the 

 flowers 2, lanceolate, pointed, soou 

 falling off; flower stalks much longer 

 than the flowers. Seeds black, flat, 

 triangular, 1/16 inch long. (Fig. 28.) 



Common in rather thin clayey 

 soils in southern Indiana. June- 

 Aug. This weed has a strong 

 onion-like odor and the numerous 

 bulblets which it bears, like sets of 

 common onions at the top of the 

 stein, are formed early enough to 

 be harvested with wheat and spoil 

 the flour. Where found in pas- 



Fig. 28. o, mature plant bearing bulblets and 

 flowers; 6, young shoot; c, bulblet with filament 

 and same enlarged; i, cross-sqctjon of leaf. (After 

 Pewey.) 



