438. COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 
WHITE-TOP 
Erigeron dnnuus, L. 
Other English names: Tall Whiteweed, Daisy Fleabane, Sweet 
Scabious. 
Native. Annual or winter annual. Propagates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: May to November. 
Seed-time: June to December. 
Range: Nova Scotia to Alaska, southward to Georgia and Missouri. 
Habitat: Fields, meadows, roadsides, waste places. 
Fie. 304. — White- 
top (Hrigeron an- 
nuus). X. 
Means of control 
A special pest of grass and clover fields, 
the earlier flowers maturing and dropping 
seeds into the soil before the accompanying 
crop is ready to harvest, thus assuring a con- 
tinuity of its unwelcome ‘presence. Seed- 
bearing plants are transported in baled hay 
and the seeds are a common impurity of grass 
seeds. - 
Stem two to five feet tall, erect, stiff, some- 
what ridged, sparsely covered with spreading 
hairs, much branched at the top. Leaves 
thin, coarsely and sharply toothed, the lower 
ones long-ovate, tapering into margined peti- 
oles, the upper ones lance-shaped, acute, 
toothed only along the sides, sessile or with 
very short petioles,-those on the branches 
still smaller and usually entire. Heads very 
numerous, in many corymbose clusters, on 
short pedicels, about a half-inch broad, the 
many narrow rays white or faintly tinged 
with purple; Jracts of the involucre bristly- 
hairy and nearly linear. Achenes very small, 
light-colored, flattened, slightly hairy. Pappus 
double, the inner row of fine bristly kairs, the 
outer row of short slender scales. (Fig. 304.) 
If the infestation is new and the weed not so abundant as to 
make: the task impracticable, it will pay to hand-pull and remove 
