HARPER'S GUIDE TO WILD FLOWERS 



Black Bindweed 



P. Convolvulus. — This is a prostrate or twining species, with 

 halberd or heart - shaped leaves, a rough stem, and greenish 

 flowers in loose, irregular axillary clusters. A common weed in 

 cultivated or waste grounds. 



Pigweed. Lamb's Quarters 



Chenopbdium album. — Family, Goosefoot. Every one knows 

 the pigweed, and wishes it were not so common. The green flowers 

 grow in dense, spiked clusters, the calyx covering the seed in fruit. 

 No corolla. The leaves are narrow above, broader below, angu- 

 larly toothed. 



The farmer's wife boils the tender tops of this weed, not 

 knowing that "the plant is nearly related to her garden 

 spinach and beets. As the plant grows older it becomes 

 white and mealy. 



Orach 



Atriplex patula. — Family, Goosefoot. Flowers, of two sorts, 

 the staminate with a 3 to 5 -parted calyx; the pistillate with 2 

 large bractlets underneath, united at their bases. Spikes, slender, 

 and sometimes the two kinds of flowers may be found together. 

 Leaves, alternate or opposite, long and narrow, especially at the 

 top, those lower down 3 -cut or lobed; the upper sessile; the lower 

 with petioles. Stem, mealy. Summer and autumn. 



Homely, weed-like annuals, found in saline soil along 

 our coast. Var. hastata has broadly arrow-shaped leaves, 

 irregularly and coarsely toothed. Found also along the 

 Great Lakes. 



Sea Beach Atriplex 



A. arenaria is 6 to 18 inches high, slender-stemmed, erect or 

 somewhat prostrate; with short petioles or sessile, oblong or 

 linear leaves, rounded or pointed at apex, the flowers in clusters 

 in the axils. Whole plant pale green, silvery-scurfy. 



Glasswort. Samphire 



Salicornia mucronata. — Family, Goosefoot. No leaves, but stem 

 fleshy, jointed, and the whole plant becomes reddish with age. 



There are many coarse, uninteresting, weed-like plants 

 along the seashore. Those which belong to the Goosefoot 

 Family have little beauty of form or color, being devoid of a 

 corolla. This one is low, fleshy, with a thick spike of flow- 

 ers in groups of threes, the middle one higher than the side 

 flowers, all sunk in hollows in the axils of the upper scales. 



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