446 COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 
rounded by leafy, white-woolly bracts. Involucral scales oblong, 
the outer ones bluntly rounded and woolly, the inner rows acute, 
dry and scarious, yellowish white. Its very low, spreading habit 
of growth and dense white-woolliness would make it a pretty 
border plant in the flower garden if its ambitions in regard to 
bloom and fruitage were kept nipped in the bud. 
Means of control 
Hoe-cutting or hand-pulling while in early bloom, making cer- 
tain that no seed has developed. 
ELECAMPANE 
Inula H elénium, L. 
Other English names: Horseheal, Horse Elder, Scabwort, Elf Dock, 
Velvet Dock, Yellow Starwort. 
Introduced. Perennial. Prop- 
agates by seeds. 
Time of bloom: July to Sep- 
tember. 
Seed-time: August to October. 
Range: Nova Scotia to Minne- 
sota, southward to North 
Carolina and Missouri. 
Habitat: Old fields, pastures, 
roadsides, barnyards, and 
waste places. 
In former days a small patch 
of this plant was often kept by 
country people for the relief of 
asthmatic horses, “to help the 
heaves” —the thick, fleshy, mu- 
cilaginous, yellow taproot being 
the part used; it is still valued 
medicinally and collectors receive 
three to five cents a pound for it, 
collected in the autumn of the 
Fie. 311. — Elecampane (Inula Hel- second year of growth, sliced, 
enium). xX}. and dried. 
