100 POLYGONACEAE (BUCKWHEAT FAMILY) 
color, their peduncles rough-hairy and often glandular, growing in 
dense spikes, one to four inches long; calyx five-lobed; stamens 
five, exserted; style two-cleft to about half its length, exserted. 
Achenes lens-shaped, black, and shining. 
Means of control 
Cutting and many times cutting, close to the ground, for the 
purpose of depriving the rootstocks of all food assimilated by the 
leaves and preventing seed production. Small areas should be 
grubbed out. , 
PENNSYLVANIA SMARTWEED 
Polgjgonum pennsylvdnicum, L. 
Other English names: Glandular Persicary, Purplehead. 
Native. Annual. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: July to October. 
Seed-time: August to November. 
Range: Eastern Canada and 
United States to Minnesota, 
southward to the Gulf of Mexico. 
Habitat: Moist soil; damp grass 
lands, waste places, and along 
streams and ditches. 
A pest of lowland clover fields, 
as it ripens its earlier seeds about 
the time of clover cutting. Stems 
two to five feet tall, somewhat 
hard and woody when old, and of 
rather branching and sprawling 
habit, the lower part smooth but 
the topmost leaves and the flower- 
stalks set with gland-tipped hairs. 
Leaves two to ten inches long, 
lance-shaped, with short petioles; 
sheathing stipules smooth and thin. 
Flowers in short, crowded, erect 
spikes, cylindric, often blunt at 
Fic. 59.— Pennsylvania Persicary the end, deep pink; they are fre- 
(Polygonum pennsylvanicum). X%. quently affected with a smut or 
