AMERICAN" AGRICULTURIST. 
7 
BED-ROOT OR PIGEON-WEED. 
The last Journal of the Royal Agricultural 
Society contains a valuable and interesting arti¬ 
cle, by Prof. James F. W. Johnston, upon the 
geological relations of the soils of the Eastern 
United States. While speaking of wheat soils, 
he is led into some remarks upon red-root, which 
we find quite interesting, and transfer to our 
columns. 
In speaking of the soils which rest upon the 
Marcellus shales represented in the above sec¬ 
tion, I have alluded to the difficulty experienced 
in keeping them clean, and to their being espe¬ 
cially infested with the corn gromwell, (Litho- 
spermum arvense,) known in North America by 
the various names of pigeon-weed, red-root, 
steen-crout, stony-seed, and wheat-thief. In 
Yates county, in Western New-York, a little to 
the west of the line of section N. S., the pigeon- 
weed is described to be so abundant in some 
places as almost to have become the lord of the 
soil. It was unknown there—as it is said to 
have been in all this lake country, and on the river 
flats of the St. Lawrence—thirty years ago. It 
is supposed to have been an importation from 
Europe, probably in samples of unclean seed- 
corn from England, France, or Germany. Now, 
“ hundreds of bushels of the seed are purchased 
at the Yates county oil-mill; and if it were 
worth 8s. instead of Is. 6 d. a bushel, these hun¬ 
dreds would be thousands.”* 
My readers will observe in the concluding 
words of this quotation how one evil leads to 
another. The purchase of this seed at the oil- 
mills must be mainly for the purpose of adultera¬ 
tion.! I have examined samples of American 
linseed cake, in which seeds were to be recog¬ 
nized that I could not name. They might, I 
then thought, be those of the dodder—a parasite 
which in this country infests the flax-plant in 
some localities—but they might also be other 
cheap seeds purposely mixed with the linseed. 
To persons who are in the habit of buying the 
cheaper varieties of American cake, this point 
may not be unworthy of attention; and as oil¬ 
cakes are chiefly bought by farmers, some may 
regard it as a kind of poetical justice that the 
idle farmers in one country should be the means 
of punishing the less discerning of their own 
class in another. 
The physiological history of this Lithosper- 
mum teaches us both how necessary a certain 
amount of physiological knowledge, in reference 
especially to the plants of his own local flora, is 
to the practical farmer; and also how unexpect¬ 
edly the careless farmer may be punished for a 
neglect of what maybe called the very first rule 
of strong-land farming, that is, of keeping his 
land clean. On the flat clay lands of Lower 
Canada, opposite to Montreal, formerly cele¬ 
brated for their wheat, I found the same weed 
spoken of as a universal pest, though, as in New- 
York State, it was said to have been wholly un¬ 
known thirty years before. A constant repeti¬ 
tion of wheat crops for a long series of years 
without cleaning had led to this result. 
The peculiarities in the character and habit 
of this weed consist, first, in the hard shell with 
which its seed or nut is covered; second, in the 
time at which it comes up and ripens its seed ; 
third, in the superficial way in which its roots 
spread. The hardness of its covering is such 
that “ neither the gizzard of a fowl nor the 
stomach of an ox can destroy it.” Thus it will 
be for years in the ground without perishing, 
* Transactions of the New-York State Agricultural So¬ 
ciety, 1846, p. 436. 
+ In the transactions of the New-York State Agricultural 
Society for 1850, p. 512, 1 find it stated that this seed yields 
two or three quarts of oil from a bushel of seed. As a gal¬ 
lon of such oil weighs about 7X lbs., we may take four 
pounds as the average yield of this seed per bushel. But 
linseed of 52 lbs. a bushel yields 17 lbs. of oil; and the best 
rape of 56 lbs. yields 16 lbs. a bushel. Supposing the grom¬ 
well seed to be about 50 lbs. weight per bushel, 4 lbs. of oil 
would barely pay the cost of expressing, were it not for the 
value of the cake. English crushers reckon that, for an 
additional shilling in the price of linseed per quarter, about 
3 lbs. more of oil should be yielded, so that in their reckon¬ 
ing, Is. 6d., the price of the gromwell seed, would require 
lbs. of oil to pay the cost of the seed alone. The value 
of the cake, therefore, as I have said in the text, must be 
what the Yates county crushers mainly look to, 
ready to sprout when an opportunity of germi¬ 
nating occurs. It grows very little in spring, 
but it shoots up and ripens in autumn, and its 
roots spread through the surface soil only, and 
exhaust the food by which the young wheat 
should be nourished. A knowledge of these 
facts teaches us, first, that unless care be taken 
to exclude the seed from the farm, it will remain 
a troublesome weed for many years, even to the 
industrious, careful, and intelligent cultivator. 
It is said to be so prolific as to increase “ more 
than two hundred-fold annually!” In the 
second place, that spring ploughing will do little 
good in the way of extirpating it, as at that sea¬ 
son it has scarcely begun to grow. United 
spring and autumn ploughing is “ the only relia¬ 
ble remedy.” Thirdly, that raising wheat year 
after year allows it to grow and ripen with the 
wheat, and to seed the ground more thickly 
every successive crop. It is said that when it 
has once got into the land, two or three succes¬ 
sive crops of wheat will give it entire possession 
of the soil. It is not therefore the immediately 
exhausting effects of successive corn crops which 
have alone almost banished the wheat culture 
from large tracts of land in North America, 
especially on the river St. Lawrence ; the indi¬ 
rect or attendant consequences of this mode of 
culture, the weeds it fosters, &c., have had an 
important influence also. 
These observations are not without their value 
at home. For although with us a continued 
succession of corn crops is rarely now seen upon 
any land, yet foul and weedy farms are unhap¬ 
pily still too frequent. And the more one 
studies the history and habits of the weeds 
which almost every district can boast of as pe¬ 
culiarly attached to itself, the more one becomes 
satisfied of the value of a familiar acquaintance 
with them to the improvement of the art of 
culture, of the condition of those who practise 
it, and of the agricultural productiveness of a 
country. No one will readily accuse me of a 
desire to undervalue the usefulness of chemistry 
to agriculture, and yet I have often had occasion 
to regret the evil influence of opinions hastily 
expressed by ill-informed persons, as if this 
branch of knowledge alone were able to bring 
this most important and difficult of arts to 
speedy perfection. The longer a cautious and 
truth-seeking man lives, the wider will appear 
the range of knowledge, theoretical and practi¬ 
cal, the more numerous the circumstances to 
be taken into consideration, before he can ar¬ 
rive at an accurate solution even of what some 
look upon as simple and superficial questions. 
-«•-»- 
From the London Gardener’s Chronicle. 
HEALING OF WOUNDS IN TREES. 
When a tree is extensively barked or other¬ 
wise wounded, can the injury be repaired? This 
question has doubtless been asked by almost 
every person who has a garden or an orchard; 
and the answer is invariably in the negative, 
unless he trusts to the slow advance of new 
matter over the face of the wound from the 
edges of the bark. And the effect of this repa¬ 
ration is, after all, merely to hide the wound, 
not to cure it. 
Nevertheless, Duhamel showed, above a cen¬ 
tury ago, that if such wounds are covered with 
glass before the surface has time to dry, and are 
then excluded from the action of the atmo¬ 
sphere, a complete cure is effected. He observed 
in one of his experiments an appearance of 
gelatinous matter oozing out from between the 
longitudinal fibres of the alburnum; small 
granulations afterwards formed, and in ten days 
after the commencement of the experiment they 
had acquired a greenish tint. During the sum¬ 
mer these appearances extended, principally 
downwards, and the wound became cicatrized 
without the lower lip of bark having contributed 
to the result. The new bark thus formed was 
very uneven, having been formed by numerous 
independent granulations; in some places it was 
even deficient. Upon examining some of the 
specimens thus obtained, Duhamel found a thin 
layer of wood beneath the new bark; and he 
hence concluded that wood can produce bark, 
and that the bark thus formed can afterwards 
produce wood. 
The statement of Duhamel was confirmed in 
all essential particulars by Meyen and others, 
who, like that author, thought they observed 
the new matter oozing out of the medullary 
processes, or points between the longitudinal 
fibres. 
More recent experiments by M. Trecul, while 
they confirm the fact that new bark and wood 
can be formed by the whole surface of a fresh 
wound, if protected from the air, also appear to 
prove that this is not effected exclusively by the 
development of new tissue from the ends of the 
medullary rays; on the contrary, this observer 
found that in some cases the new matter pro¬ 
ceeded directly from the longitudinal fibres. 
Without dwelling upon the important anatomi¬ 
cal details in his observations, and which belong 
to pure rather than to applied science, we shall 
confine ourselves to the practical results of his 
experiments. 
All his observations were made upon rings of 
wood deprived of bark, and varying in length 
from eight inches to twenty inches. To form 
an effectual guard against the action of air, &c., 
the following method was employed: several 
turns of wood or iron wire were carried round 
the trunk next the lips of the decortication, in 
order to keep the covering completely off the 
surface of the naked wood; a coat of putty 
(mastic de Vitrier) was laid upon the lips of the 
wound, which was then covered with a piece of 
India-rubber cloth ; care was taken to insure a 
perfect join of the two upright edges of the 
latter; and this proved to be so successful, that 
in several cases the liquid which oozed out of 
the alburnum eventually filled the whole space 
between the wound and the envelop. A sheet 
of card paper was then rolled round the India- 
rubber covering, and the whole was guarded by 
straw. 
In every case new bark and wood were formed 
on the surface of the wound, and irrespective 
of either the upper or lower lip; excrescences 
of various forms and sizes grew up from the 
face of the wood, and eventually joined into 
plates of new matter. M. Trecul, however, 
found the new tissues, formed by aid of the con¬ 
trivance above described, very apt to become 
mouldy and rotten, as might have been expected 
from the very nature of his arrangements. 
The general result of his inquiry being such 
as we have described, the question arises whe¬ 
ther there may not be reproductive power 
enough in wood to renew itself after having 
been wounded by amputation as well as decor¬ 
tication. M. Trecul proved that the new bark 
and wood were formed by the living tissues 
below them. It would, therefore, seem as if 
wood and bark could be renewed wherever pre¬ 
existing tissue retains its vitality. Should that 
be so, then a wound through a limb, laying bare 
the whole interior, ought to be curable, provided 
it is excluded from the contact of dry air, and 
provided the vitality of the part is sufficiently 
active. It is true that the power of reproduc¬ 
tion in all the experiments on record was ascer¬ 
tained to belong to the surface of alburnum, 
called by the French the seat of renovation, 
(couche generatrice;) and it is not improbable 
that it is here alone that a sufficient amount of 
vitality resides to effect the restoration of the 
bark and wood; but we have not experimental 
proof that it is so. We would therefore suggest 
that the curious inquirer may find something 
on this subject upon which to exercise his in¬ 
genuity ; and that is worth while to make some 
trials, for which the present season, when trees 
do not bleed, may be proper. To those disposed 
thus to operate, we should recommend, not M. 
Trecul’s apparatus, which is troublesome, and 
which brings on decay in the new granulations, 
but some one of the many kinds of grafting wax 
employed on the Continent: when warm it can 
be painted over the wound, which may then be 
left without further care. Sixteen parts by 
weight of black pitch, three of yellow resin, 
three of bees’-wax, and three of tallow, form a 
good cheap mixture, rather too sticky perhaps, 
but easily corrected, if that is so, by increasing 
the quantity of resin. Some decortications 
