GERANIACEAE (GERANIUM FAMILY) 
; vary and splits from the base when ripe. Seeds two in 
eacn ¢avity, very small, smooth, slightly flattened, reddish brown. 
Means of control 
Prevent seed development. The best way of ridding a lawn of 
this intruder is to fill a common machine oil-can with crude carbolic 
acid and squirt a few drops directly on the crown of the root as soon 
as the first small, pink blossoms make it noticeable among the 
grass. Or it may be cut from the root with a knife or a small spud. 
ALFILARIA OR FILAREE 
Erédium cicutarium, L’Her. 
Other English names: Pin Clover, Pin Grass, Pin Weed, Stork’s- 
bill, Heron’s-bill 
Introduced. Annual or biennial. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: April to September. 
Seed-time: Late May to October. 
Range: Nova Scotia to Oregon, southward to New Jersey, Texas, 
and Mexico. Very abundant on the Pacific coast. 
Habitat: Dry soil; fields and waste places. 
In the arid lands of the West and the Southwest, the Filaree is 
valued as a pasture plant when young; but where better forage is 
plentiful it is regarded as a weed. Stems tufted, six inches to a 
foot in height, hairy, somewhat viscid, reddish, usually branched 
above. Leaves pinnatifid, the segments again finely cut and 
toothed, the lower ones with petioles, the upper ones sessile. 
Flowers in umbellate clusters of two to twelve, pink or light purple, 
about a third of an inch broad; petals five, with rounded tips; 
sepals five, bristle-pointed and hateys ; stamen-bearing anthers five, 
alternating with as many sterile filaments; carpels and styles five, 
united into a “stork’s-bill” one or two inches long, when ripe split- 
ting from a central axis into spirally twisted and bearded awns or 
beaks with sickle-bent tips; when damp the awns straighten and 
when dry they recoil, thus being easily caught in the fleeces of 
sheep, and the seed so distributed. (Fig. 182.) 
Occupying about the same range as this plant is a near relative, 
the Musk Clover, or Musky Alfilaria (Erédium moschatum, L’Her.), 
