NYCTAGINACEAE (FOUR-O’CLOCK FAMILY) 129 
the fall when well stored with plant substance, cut in transverse 
slices, and dried. 
Stems four to ten feet tall, stout, smooth, usually red or purplish. 
Leaves oblong lance-shaped, rather thick, smooth, deep green, 
entire, pointed at both ends, six inches to a foot long, with short 
petioles; they have an unpleasant odor when bruised. Flowers 
in terminal racemes, which by the further growth of the plant 
become lateral and opposite the leaves; calyx white, with five 
rounded sepals; stamens and styles ten. Fruit in drooping 
clusters, each blossom producing a juicy, dark purple berry, with 
ten carpels, each containing a single seed. (Fig. 81.) 
Means of control 
Grub out wholly, selling root and fruit to pay for the trouble if 
possible; or cut off below the crown and apply dry salt, carbolic 
acid or kerosene to the cut surface of the root. 
HEART-LEAVED UMBRELLA-WORT 
Oxybaphus nyctagineus, Sweet 
(Alliénia nyctaginea, Michx.) 
Other English names: Wild Four o’clock. Umbrella Plant. 
Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds.” 
Time of bloom: May to August. 
Seed-time: June to September. : 
Range: Manitoba to the Northwest Territory, southward to New 
Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana. 
Habitat: Prairies; dry fields and meadows. 
A native relative of the garden Four o’clock, and a very per- 
sistent weed, having a large, fleshy, deep-boring taproot which 
makes it a gross feeder and about as hard to dislodge as the Curled 
Dock. Stem one to three feet tall, angled, smooth or nearly so, 
branching by repeated forking. Leaves opposite, smooth, entire, 
two to four inches long, broadly ovate or heart-shaped, and all peti- 
oled except the uppermost pairs. Flowers in forking terminal clus- 
ters, the peduncles and pedicels all somewhat hairy; subtending 
each cluster of three to five flowers is a saucer-shaped or umbrella- 
like involucre, five-lobed, persistent, and enlarging as the flowers 
K 
