CARYOPHYLLACEAE (PINK FAMILY) 149 
Range: New Brunswick and Ontario southward to New Jersey, 
Illinois, and Iowa. 
Habitat: Moist soil; fields, meadows, roadsides, and waste places. 
A beautiful flower, but also a very pernicious weed. Stems 
thickly tufted, six inches to two feet in height, pale green, smooth 
and glaucous; some stems of each tuft are 
flowerless but bear many leaves that assimi- 
late food for storage in the rootstocks. 
Leaves rather thick in texture and glau- 
cous, obiong, pointed, the upper ones often 
meeting around the stems, the lower ones 
usually spatulate, narrowing to margined 
petioles. Flowers in loose, open panicles, 
on slender pedicels, white, drooping, each 
blossom about a half-inch broad, the five 
petals deeply cleft, and ten long stamens 
out-thrust, tipped with brown anthers; styles 
three ; calyx pale green, very much inflated, |. 
beautifully veined, sometimes with pinkish 
purple, sometimes with markings of deeper 
green. Capsule broadly ovoid, opening with 
five recurved teeth. Seed rounded kidney- Hie ion Bind 
shaped, brown, roughened with fine tuber- Gumpion (Silene iat 
cles. (Fig. 100.) folia). x4. 
Means of control 
Prevent seed production. Cut the stalks from the roots well 
below the crowns, with hoe, spud, or broad-bladed cultivator, so 
frequently that little or no sustenance may be given the creeping 
rootstocks. If the infested ground is in meadow it should be 
broken up and put to cultivated crops, well tilled for two or more 
seasons. 
BOUNCING BET 
Sapondria officinalis, L. 
Other English names: Soapwort, Scourwort, Fuller’s Herb, Old 
Maid’s Pink, Hedge Pink, Sweet Betty, Wild Sweet William, 
Lady-by-the-Gate, London Pride. 
