HELPING WEED THE PASTURE 155 



" You must pull them up by the roots," Philip 

 shouted. 



Then he and Tommy both said I needn't be in 

 the bargain, but that I could help them. First I 

 went with Tommy, and we pulled up Black-eyed 

 Susans. I got fifty some time before Tommy. 

 They were very hard to pull and hurt my hands 

 dreadfully. Their stems were covered with sharp 

 bristles that pricked. 



Tommy said : " That's why Uncle Hiram 

 wants to get rid of them; neither his horses nor 

 his cows will eat the hay they're in. The sharp 

 stems stick in their throats and make them sick." 



Another reason I didn't like to pick Black-eyed 

 Susans was because they nearly all had bees, or 

 wasps, or flies, or beetles on them, which it was 

 hard to brush away. I wouldn't have minded 

 butterflies. I could see that these other insects 

 were all hungry and trying to get the nectar which 

 was in the hundreds of tiny florets packed to- 

 gether in the brown center cones. Tommy told 

 me while I was helping him that Black-eyed 

 Susan is really not one flower alone, but a whole 

 colony of two kinds of florets. The yellow, nar- 

 row pieces all around the centers are called strap- 

 shaped flowers, because they are the shape of little 

 straps ; and the hundreds of tiny ones in the brown 

 centers are called tubular flowers, because they are 

 like little tubes. 



Daisies grow this same way. So it is not only 



