140 THE INDIANA WEED BOOK. 



formed; deep cutting in early summer; in old fields, increased fer- 

 tilization and cultivation. 



The fuller's teasel (D. fullonum L.) is generally regarded as a 

 cultivated form of the wild plant. It has the points of the chaffy 

 bracts hooked at the tip and the heads were formerly used by cloth 

 manufacturers as a kind of card to raise the nap on woolen cloth. 



In Europe it is used to foretell the weather, it being said that 

 "tezils, or fuller's thistle being gathered and hanged up in the 

 house, where the air may come freely to it, upon the alteration of 

 cold and windy weather will grow smoother, and against rain will 

 close up its prickles. ' ' 



The Bell-flower Family.— CAMP ANULACE^E. 



Herbs with alternate leaves, acrid and usually milky juice and 

 perfect scattered flowers. Calyx 5-lobed or parted, its tube at- 

 tached to the ovary; corolla 5-lobed or more or less 2-lipped, the 

 petals rarely wholly separate; stamens 5, free from the corolla, 

 alternate with its lobes; ovary 2-5 celled. Fruit a capsule with 

 very small and numerous seeds. 



By recent botanists the bell-flowers and lobelias have been com- 

 bined into one family of 1,500 or more species of wide geographic 

 distribution. It is represented in Indiana by 6 bell-flowers and 7 

 lobelias, 3 of which are common enough to be termed weeds, though 

 none of them are very aggressive. To the family belong some of 

 our most handsome wild flowers. The tall bell-flower, with its blue 

 bell-like blossoms in a long loose terminal spike, is frequent along 

 the borders of moist woods and thickets throughout the State, while 

 the little harebell and the marsh bell-flowers occur only in the 

 northern counties. One of the lobelias is 



"The cardinal-flower whose heart-red bloom. 

 Glows like a living coal upon the green 

 Of the midsummer meadows." 



It waves its red pennons above the sedges of many a swamp and 

 among all our wild plants which bloom from August to October it 

 is without a peer for brilliancy of color and gracefulness of form. 

 The flowers of the lobelias resemble those of the mints and figworts, 

 but the stamens or anthers are always more or less united and the 

 corolla is split to the base on one side. 



105. Leqouzia perforata L. Venus' Looking Glass. Clasping Bell- 

 flower. (A. N. 3.) 

 Stem very leafy, half erect or prostrate, often branched near the 

 base, 6-24 inches long; leaves shell-shaped, scalloped, rounded or broadly 



