Pwwsoti : Weeds. 



because it invariably accompanies the settler. We have all heard 

 how in South America our thistles gfrow so rankly as to conceal 

 a horseman, and how in New Zealand our watercresses choke 

 up the rivers. I am told that in New Zealand, in which lonely 

 islands the native veg^etation is naturally particularly weak, 

 nearly all the wayside plants are introductions from Eng-land. 

 If the plants of America and the new countries are unable to 

 colonise Europe, far less so are their weeds, for they have not 

 had time to develop strong weeds of their own : their lands 

 have not been long enough under cultivation. So at present 

 the Eurasian weed holds the field in all temperate climates. 

 What the ages may have in store for posterity we shall never 

 know, but it seems likely that the vast cornlands of North 

 America will have the opportunity of developing the most 

 formidable agricultural pests of the future. 



North and Central Europe and North and Central Asia must 

 then be held to be the birthplace of our weeds and of their once 

 truly wild ancestors. Some of them would spring from the 

 north of this land-tract and others would originate farther 

 south. Even now many of them keep their latitude pretty 

 strictly. The poppies, so abundant in the South of England, 

 grow less frequent as you travel north, and you lose them 

 altogether at last. The annual mercury, the commonest weed 

 of Central Europe, only just crosses the Channel. 



We in England are in the north of this zone, and no doubt 

 we have received some of our weeds from the south, as we have 

 given it the groundsel and the chickweed. The bright-coloured 

 poppies could hardly have been born under our leaden skies, nor 

 was the corn marigold evolved here, although it now covers the 

 fields of Orkney in autumn with the same gold with which in 

 Malta it heralds the spring. Doubtless the scarlet pimpernel 

 came to us from a sunnier land. 



Inland rocks and wastes may have been the native home 

 of many of these annuals, as the speedwells, the geraniums, the 

 fumitories, and the small crucifers and labiates, for we find many 

 species of these plants still there. Perhaps the Knotgrasses came 

 from freshwater strands : most of the family love the waterside. 



It seems as though many weeds originated, like our garden 

 vegetables, near the sea. The cabbage, seakale, radish, carrot, 

 celery, beetroot, and asparagus are all native maritime plants, 

 and I think it likely that the parent of the charlock grew on 

 the cliffs alongside the ancestor of the garden cabbages and 

 turnips. The fleshy-leaved form of the scentless mayweed is 



igoj January 2. 



