142 



THE INDIANA WEED BOOK. 



emetic. Horses and cattle seem to know of its acrid qualities, care- 

 fully browsing the palatable herbage all about it, yet leaving its 



stalk untouched. Remedies: hand 

 pulling or mowing before the seeds 

 ripen ; increased fertilization in old 

 fields. 



In gathering Indian tobacco for 

 sale the leaves and tops should be col- 

 lected in late summer, dried in the 

 shade and then kept in covered ves- 

 sels. The seeds are very small, 400 

 to 500 in each capsule. The dried 

 leaves and tops bring from 3 to 8 

 cents and the seeds 15 to 20 cents per 

 pound. They are sold under the name 

 of lobelia. 



The Chicory Family. — 

 CICHORIACE^. 



Herbs usually with acrid or bitter- 

 Fig. 103. (After vaseyj milky juice, alternate or basal leaves, 

 and yellow, rarely pink or blue flowers in dense compound heads on 

 a common receptacle and surrounded at base with one or more 

 rows of scale-like bracts called the involucre. Flowers all alike, 

 perfect; calyx tube surrounding and firmly joined to the ovary 

 and usually having on its top a pappus of scales or bristles to aid 

 in the distribution of the seed; corolla with its petals united into 

 a long or short tube and a strap-shaped, usually 5-toothed, upper 

 portion called a ray; anthers united into a tube; ovary 1-celled, 

 1 -seeded. Fruit an achene. (Figs, 1, a; 10, g.) 



Until recently this family and the next were united with the 

 great family of Compositag, comprising over 11,000 species of known 

 plants. By modern botanists the Compositag family has been split 

 up into three, of which the dandelions, ragweeds and sunflowers 

 are respectively among the best known and typical members of 

 each. The group, with all the flowers of the head rayed or ligu- 

 late and the juice of stem and leaves milky, is separated from other 

 Composite, having all the central flowers of the head tubular and 

 the juice very rarely milky, under the name of the Chicory family. 

 This separation is more for convenience in classification than for 

 natural reasons The strap-shaped corolla (Fig. 10, g) may be 

 supposed to be formed by splitting a tubular one down one side 



