516 COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 
than ten to fifteen inches tall, will so damage the succulent tops 
that the plants will not recover sufficiently to produce buds before 
they are again cut with the grain. After harvest new plants sent 
up by the rootstocks should be cut off with a broad-shared culti- 
vator, the blades of which should be sharp and overlapping suffi- 
ciently to cut everything before them. Subsequent fall plowing 
will insure that the rootstocks get very little sustenance in that 
year. In the next season a well-tilled and profitable hoed crop 
should leave the ground clean of thistles and other weeds, and in 
good trim for a spring grain crop — barley or oats — which should 
be seeded with red clover. Waysides and waste places should 
receive attention; in these places the patches are best treated 
with hot brine, caustic:soda, or kerosene, killing all other plant 
growth as well but ridding the 
ground at once of the prickly 
pests. : 
SCOTCH THISTLE 
e 
Onopérdum Acdnthium, L. 
Other English names: Cotton 
Thistle, Downy Thistle, Silver 
Thistle, Queen Mary’s Thistle, 
Asses’ Thistle. 
Introduced. Annualor biennial. . 
Propagates by seeds. 
Se of bloom: July to Septem- 
* ber. 
Seed-time: August to October. 
Range: New Brunswick and 
Nova Scotia to Ontario, south- 
ward to New Jersey and Ohio. 
Habitat: Roadsides and waste 
places. 
Said to be the heraldic plant 
of Scotland, but now probably 
more abundant in its adopted 
land than on its native heath. 
Stems three to nine feet tall, 
Fic, 357.— Scotch Thistle (Onopor- erect, stout, branching; the 
dum Acanthium). X }. whole plant densely clothed all 
