PAPAVERACEAE (POPPY FAMILY) 169 
The peasant: farmers of Europe, long before science had ex- 
plained “the reason why,”’ were very certain that wheat fields would 
be smitten with rust if Barberry bushes grew near by, and insisted 
on their extirpation. Doctor William Darlington, in his most 
instructive book on “American Weeds and Useful Plants” pub- 
lished in 1847, sarcastically mentions that “It was formerly a 
popular belief and one that prevails yet to some extent, thatthe 
Barberry possesses the power of blasting grain; the fallacy of this 
idea has been proved.” But popular belief was right, nevertheless, 
for it is now known that the wheat-rust fungus (Puccinia graminis) 
passes one stage of its life on the leaves of the Barberry. 
The plant is a shrub, four to eight feet high; leaves alternate or 
fascicled, one to two inches long, obovate, obtuse, thick, smooth, 
bristly-toothed, growing in the axils of small, three-forked spines. 
Flowers in pendulous racemes, yellow, each with six roundish sepals, 
six petals, upcurved and with two small glands at the base, six 
stamens, sensitive, springing up against the stigma when touched. 
Fruit an oblong, scarlet berry ; birds eat the fruit and void the seeds 
in thickets and along the fences, which accounts for the frequency of 
the plants in such places. (Fig. 115.) 
Means of control 
Plants that menace the grain fields should be grubbed out and 
destroyed, but in the house grounds or the garden borders there is 
no shrub more graceful and attractive. 
GREAT CELANDINE 
Chelidonium majus, L. 
Other English names: Swallow-wort, Tetterwort, Felonwort, Wart- 
weed, Kill-wart, Devil’s Milk. 
Introduced. Biennial. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: April to August. 
Seed-time: June to September. 
Range: Maine to Ontario, southward to Virginia... 
Habitat: Farmyards, roadsides, waste places, borders of woods. 
Chelidon means a swallow, and it is said that the swallows come 
with the first opening flower of this plant and go as the last bloom 
