The Viper's Bugloss 



propitious. It loves dry fields and waste places, 

 but is abundant only in the south of England. 



A few years after Culpepper was writing so 

 warmly of it, the Viper's Bugloss shared in the 

 fashion of the day and went colonising to the United 

 States. It was in 1683 that it first appeared an 

 uninvited guest of the new land. No one knew how 

 it had travelled there, but the few stowaways quickly 

 became a mighty over-riding host that had to be 

 reckoned and fought with, A century and a half 

 afterwards. Dr. Asa Gray, the naturalist, reported 

 that it had taken complete possession, even of 

 cultivated fields, of over a hundred miles in a certain 

 valley in Virginia. No wonder that the farmers of 

 the New World grumble and say that their most 

 pernicious and persistent weeds are all foreigners. 



Other names for this plant are Common Echium, 

 Cat's Tails, Viper's Herb, and Viper's Grass. In 

 America it is also known as Blueweed, Snakeflower, 

 and Blue Thistle. 



"5 



