822 CONVOLVULACEAE (CONVOLVULUS FAMILY) 
Time of bloom: June throughout the summer. 
Seed-time: August until cut off by frost. Eas : , 
Range: Nova Scotia to Manitoba, southward to Virginia, Missouri, 
and Kansas. : 
Habitat: Rich soil; fields, meadows, and waste places. 
A most obnoxious weed, spreading chiefly by means of its long, 
creeping, cord-like roots, which at any part of their length may 
bud new plants. Stems smooth, slightly 
angled, slender, one to three feet long, twin- 
ing about and over any plant within reach, 
robbing it of air and light while the roots 
below are starving it of food and moisture. 
Leaves alternate, halberd-shaped, with back- 
ward-pointing lobes at the base, on slender 
petioles. Flowers pink, sometimes nearly 
white, funnel-shaped, about an inch across, 
usually but one or two on each slender pe- 
duncle, but occasionally three or four; calyx 
not bracted at the base as in the following 
species, but there are two small scale-like 
bracts, some distance below, on the peduncle. 
Capsules globular, two-celled, usually four- 
seeded. Seeds dark brown, about one-eighth 
of an inch long, pear-shaped, rough, with one 
side flat and the other rounded ; too frequently 
an impurity of other seeds. (Fig. 224.) 
’ 
Fig. 224.— Field Means of control 
Bindweed (Convolvulus 
ees . 1, Sow clean seed. Put the ground under 
clean cultivation for two years; the infested 
land should be deeply plowed and as many as possible of the 
whip-cord roots harrowed out or raked out and destroyed, or 
they may be fed to pigs; but each bit left in the soil will start 
new growth and tillage must be so frequent and so thorough that 
no green leaves are permitted to feed these roots. Where’ it is 
practicable to grow alfalfa, this crop tends to smother the Bind- 
weed with its thick cover and the frequent cutting checks leaf 
growth of the weed and prevents seeding. Or infested land may 
