110 



WEEDS, AND THE MANAGEMENT OF THEM 



WEEDS, AND THE MANAGEMENT OF THEM 



Weeds are plants that are not wanted. They are of two general kinds, — those that inhabit 

 waste or unoccupied areas, and those that invade cropped lands and compete with the plants that the 

 husbandman grows. Certain species of plants are by nature adapted to 

 occupy such places or to engage in guch competition, and these particu- 

 lar plants are commonly known as weeds ; but weediness is not charac- 

 terized by species but by habits and adapta- "%, 

 bilities. Any plant may be a weed at times. 

 Buckwheat or rye is a weed when it volun- 

 teers in other crops and becomes a nuisance. 

 Elm-tree seedlings may be pestiferous. When 

 any crop is too thick, there is competition 

 among fellows, and the weaker and useless 

 ones are weeds to the better ones. It has 

 been said that the worst weed in a corn-field 

 is corn. 



All plants are contending for a place in 

 which to live and to spread their kind. They 

 all are invading new fields. The more suc- 

 cessful their invasion, the more inimical they 

 are to other plants. They overrun, and we 

 call them weeds. The weed plants are there- 

 fore virile and persistent types. They are 

 weeds because of one or all of these attri- 

 butes: (1) They are adapted to a wide range 

 of conditions ; (2) many of them 

 have a life-cycle similar to that 

 of some cultivated plant ; (3) they 

 are tenacious of life ; (4) they 

 produce seeds or other propaga- 

 ting parts in abundance ; (5) they 

 have means of disseminating the 

 Fig. 134. Pigweed, lambs-quarter seeds or parts, either by natural 

 (.Ohenopodium album). agencies or by resembling crop 



seeds so closely in size or weight that they cannot be read- 

 ily separated. 



All this sounds very simple, but it is a fact that we 

 really do not know just why some of the weeds follow cer- 

 tain crops or how they injure the crops. More than once 

 the editorials in these volumes have suggested that there 

 may be relationships between plants that have been past 

 finding out. On the face of it, it seems plain enough that ^' 

 weeds reduce the yields in crops by competing for water and 

 food. We think we know that this is often the case. 



These discussions at once suggest the one means of 

 dealing with weeds, — the working out of such a system of 

 crop management that they find the least opportunity to 

 gain a foothold. It is commonly advised that the farmer do 

 this and do that to destroy weeds — always putting the em- 

 phasis on the word destroy ; but while it may be useful to 

 prevent wild carrot from seeding, it is much more to the 

 point not to have wild carrot. Much of the current advice 

 on the destruction of weeds is of small value, for the farmer ™ ,,, „ ^ ^ . , , . 



, ,.^^, ,. i. -i. i. 1, i. . .. j-ir i. Fig. 135. Redroot or pigweed (4maTO»««« 



has little time or opportunity to hunt out the different Moroatachya). 



