CARYOPHYLLACEAE (PINK FAMILY) 151 
the chemicals have leached away. Constant cutting of the green 
tops will finally starve the rootstocks, if continued without cessa- 
tion for two seasons. 
COW COCKLE 
Saponaria Vaccaria, L. 
Other English names: Cow-herb, Spring Cockle, Pink Cockle, China 
Cockle. 
Introduced. Annual. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: June to July. 
Seed-time: July to August. 
Range: Ontario to British Columbia, southward to the Gulf of 
Mexico. Locally very abundant, especially in the wheat-growing 
parts of the West. 
Habitat: Grain and alfalfa fields, waste places. 
An immigrant from Europe, where it is said to have been formerly 
used as aforage plant, the specific name, Vaccaria, a been given 
in allusion to its value as cow fodder. 
But it is listed among the “Stock- 
Poisoning Plants of Montana,” in the 
bulletin of that name published by the 
United States Department of Agricul- 
ture, and its seeds, like those of Corn 
Cockle, contain a poisonous property 
that makes flour unwholesome and dan- 
gerous to use when by accident they 
are ground with wheat. Grain contami- 
nated with these seeds is sharply “cut” 
in the market. (Fig. 102.) 
Stem one to three feet tall, erect, 
slender, smooth, glaucous, round, and 
swollen at the joints, many-branched. 
Leaves long ovate, pointed, smooth 
and glaucous, opposite and clasping the 
stem, the pairs sometimes united at 
base. Flowers in loose corymbose clus- 
ters, on rather long, wiry pedicels ; calyx 
a swelling, five-ribbed vase in two shades 
of green, the ribs darker and so promi- 
Fic. 102. — Cow Cockle 
(Saponaria Vaccaria). x }. 
