56 
THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 
SoAPWORTS.— Regarding the soapiness of New Jersey 
tea Mr. C. F. Saunders writes, "I tried a handful of 
blossoms the other da\^ in a basin of water and got a 
fairly good lather in a minute, though the lather was not 
as smooth and soapy as some of the California species 
yielded me. This beats bouncing Bet {Saponaria. omdna- 
lis) for I could never raise anything but a miserable green 
froth out of the latter." 
TuMBLEWEEDS.— Apropos of the article in the July 
Botanist, by Mr. Squires, the turableweeds in the neigh- 
borhood of Denver do not seem to be Amaratitus at all, 
but are either CTc7or7oma platyphyllvm or Russian thistle 
—mostly the thistle of late years. Ten or twelve j^ears 
ago the prairie tumbleweeds seemed to be almost entirely 
Cvclocloma. The Russian thistle had then much less foot- 
hold. The winter of 1904-1905 being cold and snowy in 
Denver as in the rest of the country, no weed got much 
chance to tumble. But the winter ot 1903-1904 was 
extraordinarily warm and dry, and the high winds, that 
state ot things always brings, rolled abou't hundreds of 
weeds. So far as I observed, they were all Russian thistle . 
I examined about forty carefully and others casually and 
all were thistles. This is not surprising, perhaps, as the 
Denver authorities seem to be doing their best to encour- 
age the growth of Russian thistle by cutting down the 
tall flowering plants— sunflower, prickly poppy, evening 
star, etc.- before they can seed, but they never touch the 
thistles. Perhaps this is on the principle of the man who 
couldn't mend his roof when it rained, and did not need to 
When it didn't rain. After the thistle gets spiny it can't 
be cut and when young it forms such beautiful soft mossj- 
mats on the vacant lots that one never thinks of it as a 
noxious weed. I should Hke to know whether the cause 
of my finding the Denver tumbleweeds all thistles was due 
to the plants of Cvclocloma being fewer in numbers than 
in years past, as Mr. Squires' article would suggest, or to 
the fact that Russian thistle grows in such overwhelming 
quantities on all the vacant lots in Denver, while Cyclo- 
