NYC TAG IITAC EAE 



America. Some are annuals and others perennials. No thought seems 

 to have been given them from the standpoint of sand binder though 

 they certainly play an important part in that work. They are low 

 spreading scurfy plants often with showy flowers and large colored 

 showy winged seeds. They seem never to be browsed. A close rela- 

 tive of the AbroniaS, a Nyctaginia, comes into the eastern part of 

 our range, in the Shinneries of New Mexico. It is a wide spreading 

 scurfy plant with very showy, dark red flowers. This plant should 

 be worthy of cultivation. 



Quamoclidion multiflorum is the most handsome Four-o'clock 

 we have in the southwest. It is confined to the Juniper and Pinon 

 belt from western Texas to southern Arizona. It frequently forms 

 bushy plants two or three feet across and two or more feet high and 

 when in blossom is a mass of crimson. The plant has no significance 

 as an erosion control or forago plant but should be interesting as 

 an ornamental. 



PORTULACACEAE 



P ortulaca ol eracea , the common Purslane, is good for a ground 

 cover and for a nurse crop. It is good forage and is used for greens 

 by both Indians and whites. After all is said, it is a poor substi- 

 tute for grasses which will grow on the same soil. 



CRUCIFERAE 



The Mustards are very abundant throughout the southwest. When 

 in flower they arc easily distinguished from any other plants as 

 they have four petals and six stamens, four long and two short. Barely, 

 extremely rarely, the flower has two or four stamens but why bring 

 that upi Other signs failing, chew a leaf and if it tastes some- 

 thing like cabbage it is a mustard. The I bustards are too numerous 

 to treat separately. Practically all are wayside weeds, many of them 

 annuals. Practically all are important bird food plants and many are 

 eaten by stock. Very few form any significant ground cover. Among 

 the better bird food plants are the Lepidiums or pepper grasses; 

 The lyp od ium; Streptanthus ; Thlaspi or Penny Cress; Bursa or 

 Shepherd's Purse; Sop hia or Tansy Mustard; Sisymbr ium and Cheiran- 

 t hu s , or Wallflower. there probably is no better quail food than 

 the Tansy Mustards, which are abundant annual weeds throughout our 

 range. The mustards are especially valuable in chicken yards as 

 the leaves as well as the seeds are eaten. At least one species, 

 the Black Mustard, Brassica nigra, causes green streaks to occur in 

 the yolks of eggs. In some quarters this renders them unsalable. 

 The suggestion has been made that eggs of this type may be exception- 

 ally rich in vitamin* Up to the present no high-powered advertising 



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