LEGUMINOSAE (PULSE FAMILY) 251 
Seed-time: August to October. 
Range: Locally established in Vermont and Ontario. 
Habitat: Fields, meadows, and waste places. 
This plant bears numerous flowers of charming color and fra- 
grance, and these pleasant traits may blind many eyes to other quali- 
ties that fit it to become a very noxious 
weed. The tough, slender rootstocks 
bear many small tubers from which new 
plants are produced, and the plant also 
fruits abundantly above ground. It 
grows in dense mats, smothering all other 
plants that grow with it. Ordinary cul- 
tivation only serves to spread it by 
breaking the rootstocks and scattering 
the tubers. 
Stems smooth, very slender, one to 
three feet long, with thin leaves and 
stipules; each pinnate leaf has but two 
oblong leaflets a little more than an 
inch long; petioles, slim and wiry, the 
tendrils hair-like and usually not branched. 
Racemes on very slender axillary pedun- 
cles, three- to six-flowered. Blossoms 
fragrant, not quite an inch long, with 
erect standard and obliquely spread 
rosy pink or reddish purple wings. 
Pods smooth, with globular, dark seeds, 
which, as forage, are dangerously un- a 
wholesome. (Fig. 178.) sus). X4. 
Means of control 
Prevent seeding and check the growth of rootstocks by close and 
persistent cutting throughout the growing season; then plow late 
in the fall, and in the next spring put the ground to a well-tilled 
hoed-crop, permitting no leaf-growth to the weed. A second sea- 
son of such root-starvation may be required, but increased returns 
from the crops repay the expense of extra tillage. 
