COMPOSITAE (COMPOSITE FAMILY) 555 
One of the most pernicious weeds that have come to us from: 
Europe, the range of which is widening every year. Grazing 
animals dislike and reject the plant even when dried in hay, for it is 
densely hairy in every part and its juices are acrid and bitter. 
Stem six to eighteen inches tall, unbranched, and without leaves 
except an occasional short bract, very slender, erect, closely set with 
short, stiff, black hairs, which, in England, 
gave the weed its name of Grim the Collier. 
Leaves basal, clustered in rosette form about 
the stem, oblong to spatulate, obtuse, dark 
green, hairy on both sides; this flat, matted 
growth of leaves chokes out grass or other 
plants among which the weed is growing. 
Thrust out from among the leaves are 
usually several stolons, or runners, with 
young plants or buds at their tips. Flower- 
heads in a compact, corymbose cluster, on 
short, glandular-hairy peduncles, only a few 
blossoms open at one time, the rest of the 
bunch being composed of buds in various 
stages of growth. The heads are about 
an inch broad when fully open, flaming 
orange-red, the rays toothed at the tips; 
bracts of the involucre imbricated in two 
or three series, lance-shaped, hairy. Achenes 
oblong, dark brown, ten-ribbed, with pap- 
pus a single row of tawny, shining, bristle- 
like hairs, spread in funnel-form, making 
parachutes by which the wind distributes 
them far and wide. (Fig. 384.) 
‘N 
Means of control 
: = 
Fie. 384. — Orange 
Hawkweed (Hieracium 
aurantiacum). xX}. 
The roots of this weed are fibrous and spreading and near the 
surface; careful cultivation of the ground, particularly with hoed 
crops, destroys it. But the plant is often a pest of permanent 
grass lands where cultivation is not desirable; here the best treat- 
ment is a liberal application of dry salt, spread broadcast over the 
