380 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[October, 
Weeds—A New One—Condrille. 
! 
Good cultivation requires us to destroy the 
plants we do not want, as much as it does to 
encourage those that we desire; in other words, 
the killing of weeds is quite as important as 
any of the necessaiy operations of the farmer 
and gardener. In order to fight weeds success¬ 
fully, one must not only know them at sight, 
hut must also know something about their 
modes of life, how long they live, and how 
they multiply. We hold that we do our readers 
as good service in making them acquainted 
with a new weed that threatens to be trouble¬ 
some, as when w T e introduce a new plant that 
promises to be useful and profitable. Many of 
our weeds—not all, but a large majority—are 
natives of other countries. It is true that they 
do not take long to become naturalized citi¬ 
zens, and as those persons, who were brought 
up under the strictest monarchies, often b$- 
come, in a republican country, the most radical, 
so do these plants from other lands quite outdo 
the “ native Americans ” in their appreciation 
of our subtropical climate, and in their readi¬ 
ness to accept the “ largest liberty,” which the 
American farmer is so willing to grant them. 
The old and familiar w T eeds show no disposi¬ 
tion to depart, but new and strange ones are 
ever ready to come; every bale of South Amer¬ 
ican or Australian wool, every cargo of bal¬ 
last that is unloaded, every parcel of trees that 
comes from an European nursery, and even 
every box that contains the personal effects of 
an immigrant, whether of the North European 
Dane or Swede, or the South Russian Men- 
nonite—each of these may be looked upon as a 
Pandora’s box with possibilities^of untold evil. 
As a single spark is sufficient to begin a great 
conflagration, so one tiny seed, which may be 
hidden in either of the receptacles which we 
have suggested, or may even come concealed in 
the coat of some choice animal, may establish 
a crop that shall waste the energies of our far¬ 
mers in the effort to subdue it, and cost our 
agriculture its annual thousands, if not mil¬ 
lions. Could some one have cut up the first 
plant that appeared here 
of Canada Thistle, 
Toadflax, Viper’s Bug- 
loss, and others of the 
legion, before it flower¬ 
ed, who can compute 
the money the act would 
have saved the coun¬ 
try ! It probably can 
not happen that any 
new r weed can be literal¬ 
ly “nipped in the bud” 
on its very first ap¬ 
pearance in the country. 
People in general do not 
notice plants enough, 
to know whether one is 
a stranger or a native, 
or care enough about 
the matter to destroy it, 
even if it has the aspect 
of a dangerous inter¬ 
loper. Generally a new 
weed must make the 
inconvenience of its 
presence felt near the 
point of its introduction, before any one will 
take the trouble to find out what it is, and by 
the time it has attracted the attention of any 
one, it has been so long established that its 
progeny has started out like a horde of tramps, 
to live upon the farmers. It becomes neces¬ 
sary that each farmer, as a matter of safety, 
should know enough of plants, to be able to 
detect a new comer. We do not mean that he 
should be a botanist—though it would add 
greatly to the pleasure of his labors to know 
well with cellar.— {Seepage 379.) 
every plant he met—but his eye should be so 
accustomed to the forms of vegetation around 
him, and his powers of observation should be 
so educated, that he can at once notice any 
stranger that appears in liis own fields, or in 
the neighborhood, for in this case charity does 
not always “ begin at home.” When a new 
plant appears, it should be at once challenged 
as to its origin and purpose, which may be best 
done by finding out at once what it is, or a 
shorter method may be followed by cutting it 
before it can mature seeds. We can not too 
strongly impress upon all cultivators the im¬ 
portance of at once attending to the case of 
every stranger plant. A human tramp gets a 
bit of the “bread of idleness,” or at most steals 
some little thing, and is off to visit the neigh¬ 
bors ; these plant-tramps generally come to 
stay, and to prevent you from raising bread, 
and instead of going to the neighbors, they send 
a stock of their abundant progeny, and, being 
social creatures, also provide for abundant com¬ 
panionship where they are. The N. Y. police 
frequently arrest suspicious characters, against 
whom no definite crime can be proved at the 
time; they take them into a gallery, and give 
them a forced sitting for their portraits, and 
the “ Rogue’s Gallery,” which numbers some 
thousands of pictures of “ hard cases,” is one 
of the curiosities of the city to those interested 
in its criminal aspects. In a similar manner do 
we serve weeds of recent introduction, and by 
means of an engraving make their identifica¬ 
tion easy. The latest suspicious plant that has 
come to our notice is Chondritta juncea, a na¬ 
tive of a large part of the European*Continent. 
It does not seem to have an English name, be¬ 
ing unknown in England; the generic name,, 
Chondrilla, is an ancient one applied to some re¬ 
lated plant, if not to this, and is not translat¬ 
able, but the French have modified the Latin 
name, and call the plant “ Condrille,” which 
will answer well enough for us. As will be 
seen by the engraving on the next page, the 
plant belongs to the Composite Family, and to 
that subdivision of it, which contains Lettuce 
and the Dandelion; indeed, the flower-heads 
are much like those of Lettuce. The plant is 
a biennial, with its root-leaves coarsely toothed 
the stem, from one to three feet high, is stiff, 
with rather large branches, hairy below, and 
smooth above, with a few narrow leaves. The 
yellow flowers are in small heads, about half 
an inch across, scattered on nearly leafless 
branches ; the pappus or down to the akenes 
(seeds) is very soft and bright white, each akene 
having a beak, at the top of which the down 
spreads like a little parasol, just as seen in the 
Dandelion on a larger scale. The plant seems 
to have been first brought to Alexandria, Va., 
where it was first discovered about ten years 
ago, and attracted no attention, except that 
botanists recorded its introduction. Since then 
it has spread, and is now found in various parts 
of Maryland; in some localities it has become 
thoroughly established, 
and we are informed 
by a correspondent that 
farmers are becoming 
alarmed at its threaten¬ 
ing appearance. Being 
a biennial, the Condrille 
is easily managed; cut 
the stems before they 
flower, and it having- 
no permanence b3 r the 
root, will, if prevented 
from ripening seeds, 
soon die out. But seeds 
will scatter far and wide, 
and the whole neigh¬ 
borhood must aid in 
the work. We can not 
find that this plant is 
troublesome to Euro¬ 
pean farmers, but its 
behavior there is no in¬ 
dication of what it will 
do here under different 
conditions of soil, cli¬ 
mate, etc., for it is often 
the case that such plants develop much more 
rapidly here than at home. Whether it is 
likely to prove aggressive and troublesome, 
or not, it should be destroyed wherever it may 
appear, if only for the sake of neat cultivation- 
self-feeding corn-ciub.—( Seepage 379.) 
