WAYSIDE WEEDS. 75 



these plants wlien fruiting. It is not all composites, 

 howevePj wMoli have these feathery wings; the 

 •daisy, the chamomile, the chrysanthemum, and 

 others, have none, or at best a few tiny scales, to 

 show where they should be. 



Both in the way of food and medicine, the com- 

 posites, of which we have examined these few repre- 

 sentatives, yield largely to man. The prevailing 

 principle is a bitter, sometimes, as in the wormwood, 

 aromatic, or, as in the lettuce, narcotic to an extent 

 which makes itself known even in the cultivated 

 vegetables, and is strong in some of the uncultivated 

 species. Dahlias, asters, cinerarias, purple groundsel, 

 the everlastings, are a few of the many brilliant 

 flowers this great family offers to us. 



The elder, which we lately mentioned, belongs 

 to the same tribe as the honeysuckle, whilst the 

 woodruff and bedstraws represent to us the madders, 

 their most remarkable features being the " whorled" 

 disposition of the leaves around the stem (Fig. 45). 

 The bedstraws have some of them white, others 

 have yeUow flowers ; the flowers of the woodruff are 

 small, but brilliant white, and those of the little 

 field-madder are pink. Tiny corollas are they all, 

 but elegantly cruciform in shape. If you have the 

 patience to dissect them under your lens you will 

 find the stamens fixed to the corolla, and the corollai 

 to the calyx. No lens do you need, however, to 

 look at the bluebells, the representatives of the 



