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Overview
Pigweed … Dogbane … Carpet Weed … Crab Grass … Wild Garlic … Spiderwort … Chicory … Ragweed … Poison Ivy … Yellow Dock … each weed is listed under its most common name, but since one man's Moneywort is another man's Creeping Jenny, its scientific and alternative common names are also given. Then follows a delightful description of each weed, full of information and good humor as well. Details for controlling the weed are given in this section. To aid in identification each weed is multiply keyed at the front of the text as to its place and season of growth, the type of soil it prefers, and physical characteristics. Even if you know nothing about botany, you will most likely be able to identify your find through these keys or just by flipping through the 102 first-rate illustrations.
To the gardener and farmer weeds are something to be hoed out and plowed under, but weeds are also a fascinating group of plants, as this thoroughly readable book will point out. They are the plants you are most likely to come upon in nature jaunts and the ones you are going to have to come to terms with if you do any gardening of your own.
"A most fascinating book." — Garden Club of America.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780486144429 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dover Publications |
| Publication date: | 07/24/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 333 |
| File size: | 16 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
Read an Excerpt
ALL ABOUT WEEDS
By EDWIN ROLLIN SPENCER, EMMA BERGDOLT
Dover Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 1968 Aileen SpencerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-486-14442-9
CHAPTER 1
THE REASONS FOR "JUST WEEDS"
WITH HABITAT AND SEASONAL INDEXES
OF ALL the forms of nature, unless it be insects, nothing is so sure to come into one's life as weeds. Most of this nation's population cannot step out of doors without being saluted by some weed of greater or less importance. To have a lawn or landscaped yard means to have trouble with weeds, and the farmer, the truck grower, the gardener, the orchardist, and even the greenhouse keeper must wage a continual war with these persistent plants.
Any plant is a weed if it insists upon growing where the husbandman wants another plant to grow. It is a plant out of place in the eye of man; in the nice eye of nature it is very much in place. In the struggle for existence a bad weed is a prince. It has the traits of a Bonaparte or a Hitler. Give it an inch and it will take a mile, all because nature has endowed it with supervitality as well as with a few characters that make it useless to man and beast. That is the nature of the worst weeds. There are others with only a few weedy traits, and some with virtues that almost remove them from the weed list. The Bermuda grass is one of this sort. It makes a valuable lawn grass as well as an excellent hay and forage crop, but it can choke out valuable cultivated crops and by so doing it becomes a bad weed.
The principal purpose of this book is to teach. It is an attempt to make interesting to any and all readers a few of the most common forms of nature.
"To him who in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language."
There is a language of the weeds. They have their peculiarities and personalities, and this book was planned and written for the express purpose of helping the reader to see weeds as they are and not as just a mass of vegetation.
Most of the weeds treated here can be identified by the drawings alone. Miss Bergdolt, a rural schoolteacher of southern Illinois, entered the author's class of Local Flora in the summer of 1935, after the plan of this book had lain dormant for nearly twenty years. Instead of pressing specimens for her herbarium Miss Bergdolt drew pictures of the plants she studied. The author gave her a piece of Bristol board with the request that she draw thereon a picture of a dandelion. That was the first drawing for this book. It was also an answer to a long-felt prayer. All but three of the drawings contained herein are from life; two are from specimens found in the Herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and one is a redrawing from an illustration in Walter Conrad Muenscher's book, Weeds, by permission of the author and of the publishers, the Macmillan Company, of New York.
The aim of the drawings is to bring out the characters that untrained observers see when they look at plants. The form and venation of leaves, the general habit of plant growth, and the general appearance of flower or flower clusters are seen by every one; color differences and floral parts are seldom noticed except by botanists. The descriptive sketch accompanying each picture aims to call attention to the most prominent characters used in identification; to show, whenever possible, how the common as well as the scientific names are meant to be descriptive; to give some of the weedy ways of the pests, and to suggest methods of eradication and control. The sketches are followed by technical descriptions taken practically verbatim in all but one instance from Gray's Manual of Botany. The one exception is in the case of the Johnson grass, which comes from Hitchcock's Manual of Grasses of the United States.
Most readers of a book like this are interested in a very few weeds: the weeds of a lawn or yard, a weed in a vegetable or flower garden, a weed in a cornfield or truck patch, a few weeds by the wayside, and so on. It was knowing this fact that gave rise to the idea of arranging habitat indexes. There are but few bad weeds in any of the few general habitats. True, some of the worst weeds are found in nearly all places, but often the habitat so favors a weed that it becomes a nuisance there and nowhere else; as every one knows who has made the acquaintance of the chickweed, that pest of the lawn. Many weeds are like that. They are bad only when their environment favors them. A favorable environment becomes a favorite habitat.
Since there are not a great many weeds that stand out in any of the habitats, and since weeds may be divided into grass-like plants and those that are not grasslike, it is possible to shorten greatly the list to be scanned by the reader who has become interested in a weed of any given habitat. If he knows that the weed is grasslike; that is, has bladelike leaves such as those seen on plants like wheat, corn, oats, and blue grass, or leaves like those of the lilies and onions—if he knows the weed to have leaves such as these—he has only to look through the names of the grasslike weeds of the habitat index that most nearly describes the place where the weed flourishes. And even if he has to turn to every weed listed it will not be an arduous task. In nine cases in ten he will find the weed illustrated and described; in the tenth case it may be a local weed or it may be one of the very few widely distributed weeds for various reasons omitted.
What is true of the grasslike weeds is true of those that are not grasslike. The reader can easily find the plant even if he has to turn to every weed listed. The list is longer than that of the grasslike weeds but in many instances the names are descriptive enough to make the search easy.
This was the original plan of the book: the making of habitat indexes. Then came the desire to give to each weed treated enough of human interest to make a readable sketch; or at least enough of interesting facts to persuade the reader that a weed is worth knowing. That a knowledge of weeds is of value the author is not only willing but eager to declare. It is truly worth while to know any form of nature if for no other reason than to be able to commune with that particular form. But man must do more than commune with the forms of nature; he must use them. To fail to use a form of nature is to admit defeat at its hands, if it is an aggressive enemy. There is a reason, a utilitarian reason, for loving our enemies. If we are to fight weeds all our lives it matters not whether we know their names or personalities, but if we are to use them as they should be used we need to know and to love them. Nearly every farmer in the United States wastes valuable fertilizer every year when he permits a weed crop to go to seed on one of his cultivated field, or when he mows that weed crop to keep it from going to seed. He hates weeds and so does not know their value. He will turn under a crop of sweet clover, but not a crop of weeds. He loves sweet clover, even though it is just a weed. He has been told how valuable this plant is because its roots are infected with a bacterium that is able to "fix" atmospheric nitrogen. It is true that the nitrogen used by this weed is taken from the air, but after the plant has used it to make its own protoplasm, and after that protoplasm has been destroyed by the soil bacteria, the results are exactly the same as when any other weed is plowed into the soil. It is the decay of the protoplasmic material that makes available the nitrates that all plants must have in order to synthesize their own protoplasm. The nitrates made from the protoplasmic contents of a ragweed, or any other weed, are identical with the nitrates derived from the protoplasmic contents of sweet clover, or any other clover, or any other legume. The only difference to be pointed out is that legumes have in their protoplasm nitrogen that was once in the air, while non-leguminous plants must get their nitrogen as nitrates from the soil; but for some reason or other the leguminous weeds seem to be able to get their nitrates where the non-leguminous crop plants fail to get them, or at least where they fail to get them in sufficient quantities to be of much worth to the crop plants. That is weed nature. That is what we mean when we say that a weed has supervitality. Well then, when weeds are plowed under they decay just as sweet clover decays (if the ground is as sweet as it has to be to grow sweet clover) and the nitrogen they used in the making of their leaves and stems is made available to the crop plants that follow the weeds.
If there were no other reasons for knowing weeds their soil-building potential would suffice. But there is something of far more importance than soil building if we consider human health the most important thing in the world. Weeds were the mother of medicine. It is surprising how many weeds are still found listed in the pharmacopoeias of the world. Even the dandelion is among the medicinal plants, and there is catnip, burdock, mustard, horehound, Jimson weed, and a great many more that are not so well known. Some of them have been dropped from the pharmacopoeias but their extracts and tinctures are still to be found in the U. S. Dispensatory, a book listing all of the available medicinal compounds. Materia medica had its beginning among the weeds. It was early discovered that plants possessed healing properties. Drowning persons grasp at straws; sick people pull weeds, and from savage to sage relief has been obtained thereby. Civilized man has never been able to do without his vegetable compounds, and most of the contents of these compounds are derived from just weeds.
The supposed potency of a weed is often reflected in its name. For instance, the botanical name of the yarrow, a common meadow weed, is Achillea millefolium, which means the thousand-leaved plant used by Achilles. It is said that the leaves of this plant will stanch blood and that Achilles used its leaves on the wounds of his soldiers. Evidently he could not find any yarrow when that arrow from the bow of Paris struck him in the heel. Anyway, the name gives some idea of the plant's mythical healing powers. One of its English names is Bloodwort, which simply means blood plant, and which, of course, refers to the astringent nature of the juice of the plant. The crushed leaves are said to be effective in stopping nosebleed.
Many of the weeds treated in this book are among the medicinal plants. It may be disconcerting to him who relies on patent medicines to learn that much of their effectiveness is derived from the juices and extracts of just weeds, but such is the case.
The control of weeds is the principal concern of most people who have anything to do with the pests. How can I get rid of chickweed, the dandelions, creeping Jenny, Canada thistle, and the rest?
There are ways to fight and control weeds, and the best-known methods are given in the sketches of the most pestiferous weeds treated in this book. There are no easy ways and no cheap ways to fight weeds. Several of them have been outlawed in several of the States, and if we were law-abiding citizens it might be possible for us to eradicate, totally, some of our worst weed enemies and thus relieve ourselves, for all time, of their inroads and robberies. Bad weeds take a terrific toll every year from our agricultural interests. We complain of taxes but say nothing when Johnson grass takes a cotton, a corn, or a potato field, or when wild garlic causes a dockage in the milk or wheat prices, even though that may be many times higher than the highest of tax levies. We work and fail to produce a decent lawn all because of that brazen hussy, the creeping Jenny, a weed that is a federal outlaw. We go right on paying her bills and caring for her until not a home in our little city has a decent lawn.
WEEDS OF THE LAWN AND YARD
I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE
1. Barnyard grass
2. Bermuda grass
3. Crab grass
4. Needle grass
5. Nimble Will
6. Panic grass
7. Sandbur
8. Squirrel-tail grass
9. Wild barley
10. Wild garlic
11. Wire grass
12. Yellow nut grass
II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE
1. Bracted plantain
2. Buckhorn
3. Chickweed
4. Common mallow
5. Common plantain
6. Creeping Jenny
7. Dandelion
8. Gill-over-the-ground
9. Heal-all
10. Knotgrass
11. Moneywort
12. Ox-eye daisy
13. Peppergrass
14. Sheep sorrel
15. Shepherd's purse
16. Spotted spurge
17. White clover
18. Yellow dock
WEEDS OF THE GARDEN AND TRUCK PATCH
I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE
1. Bermuda grass
2. Cheat
3. Crab grass
4. Foxtail grass
5. Johnson grass
6. Sandbur
7. Wild garlic
8. Yellow nut grass
11. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE
1. Carpet weed
2. Creeping Jenny
3. False mallow
4. Flower-of-an-hour
5. Gill-over-the-ground
6. Horse nettle
7. Lamb's quarters
8. Morning glory
9. Pennsylvania smartweed
10. Peppergrass
11. Pigweed
12. Pursley
13. Shepherd's purse
14. Smartweed
15. Spotted spurge
16. Thorny pigweed
17. Three-seeded mercury
18. Vining milkweed
19. White clover
20. Wild lettuce
21. Wild mustard
22. Yellow dock
WEEDS OF THE MEADOW AND PASTURE LANDS
I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE
1. Barnyard grass
2. Bermuda grass
3. Broom sedge
4. Cheat
5. Crab grass
6. Foxtail grass
7. Needle grass
8. Panic grass
9. Squirrel-tail grass
10. Wild barley
11. Wild garlic
12. Yellow nut grass
II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE
1. Blue vervain
2. Buck brush
3. Buckhorn
4. Common plantain
5. Creeping Jenny
6. Daisy fleabane
7. Evening primrose
8. Goldenrod
9. Ironweed
10. Late-flowering thoroughwort
11. Man-under-ground
12. Moth mullein
13. Mullein
14. Ox-eye daisy
15. Poor Joe
16. Queen Anne's lace
17. Snow-on-the-mountain
18. Sweet clover
19. Vining milkweed
20. White snakeroot
21. White vervain
22. Yarrow
WEEDS OF THE CORN AND COTTON FIELDS
I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE
1. Barnyard grass
2. Bermuda grass
3. Crab grass
4. Foxtail grass
5. Goose grass
6. Johnson grass
7. Panic grass
8. Wild garlic
9. Yellow nut grass
II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE
1. Canada thistle
2. Carpet weed
3. Cocklebur
4. Creeping Jenny
5. Dogbane
6. False mallow
7. Flower-of-an-hour
8. Jimson weed
9. Lamb's quarters
10. Man-under-ground
11. Milkweed
12. Morning glory
13. Pennsylvania smartweed
14. Pigweed
15. Pursley
16. Shoestring smartweed
17. Smartweed
18. Thorny Pigweed
19. Three-seeded mercury
20. Trumpet creeper
21. Velvet-leaf
22. Vining milkweed
23. Yellow dock
WEEDS OF WINTER WHEAT AND CLOVER FIELDS
I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE
1. Cheat
2. Crab grass
3. Needle grass
4. Wild garlic
5. Yellow nut grass
II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE
1. Bracted plantain
2. Buckhorn
3. Canada thistle
4. Common plantain
5. Corn cockle
6. Creeping Jenny
7. Daisy fleabane
8. Horse nettle
9. Horsetail fleabane
10. Man-under-ground
11. Morning glory
12. Peppergrass
13. Poor Joe
14. Ragweed
15. Trumpet creeper
16. Wild bean vine
17. Wild mustard
WEEDS OF THE FARM LOTS
I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE
1. Bermuda grass
2. Goose grass
3. Johnson grass
4. Needle grass
5. Nimble Will
6. Squirrel-tail grass
7. Wild barley
8. Wild garlic
9. Wire grass
11. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE
1. Black nightshade
2. Blue vervain
3. Buckhorn
4. Burdock
5. Catnip
6. Creeping Jenny
7. Dogbane
8. Dogfennel
9. Horehound
10. Horse nettle
11. Jimson weed
12. Knotgrass
13. Lamb's quarters
14. Late flowering thoroughwort
15. Motherwort
16. Moth mullein
17. Pigweed
18. Pokeweed
19. Queen Anne's lace
20. Smartweed
21. Sweet clover
22. Thorny Pigweed
23. White vervain
24. Wild lettuce
25. Yellow dock
WORST WEEDS OF WAYSIDE AND WASTE PLACES
I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE
1. Barnyard grass
2. Broom sedge
3. Cheat
4. Goose grass
5. Johnson grass
6. Sandbur
7. Spiderwort
8. Squirrel-tail grass
9. Tall red top
10. Wild barley
11. Wild garlic
(Continues...)
Excerpted from ALL ABOUT WEEDS by EDWIN ROLLIN SPENCER, EMMA BERGDOLT. Copyright © 1968 Aileen Spencer. Excerpted by permission of Dover Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
PREFACEI "THE REASONS FOR "JUST WEEDS"
HABITAT AND SEASONAL INDEXES
I. Weeds of the Lawn and Yard
II. Weeds of the Garden and Truck Patch
III. Weeds of the Meadow and Pasture Lands
IV. Weeds of the Corn and Cotton Fields
V. Weeds of Winter Wheat and Clover Fields
VI. Weeds of the Farm Lots
VII. Worst Weeds of Wayside and Waste Places
VIII. Weeds of Moist and Wet Places
IX. Weeds of Springtime
X. Weeds of Summer
XI. Weeds of Autumn
XII. Weeds of Winter
II WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE
"(The order of arrangement of the plants is that found in Gray's Manual of Botany, but this list has been alphabetized for convenient reference)"
Barnyard grass (Echinochloa crusgalli)
Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon)
Broom-sedge (Andropogon virginicus)
Calamus (Acorus calamus)
Cheat (Bromus seclainus)
Crab grass (Digitaria sanguinalis)
Fall panic grass (Panicum dichotomiflorum)
Goose grass (Eleusine indica)
Johnson grass (Sorghum halepense)
Needle grass (Aristida oligantha)
Nimble Will (Muhlenbergia Schreberi)
Sandbur (Cenchrus tribuloides)
Spiderwort (Tradescantia reflexa)
Squirrel-tail grass (Hordeum jabatum)
Tall red top (Tridens flavus)
Wild barley (Hordeum nodosum)
Wild garlic (Allium vineale)
Wire grass (Juncus tenuis)
Yellow foxtail (Setaria lutescens)
Yellow nut grass (Cyperus esculentus)
III WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE
"(The order of arrangement of the plants is that found in Gray's Manual of Botany, but this list has been alphabetized for convenient reference)"
Bedstraw (Galium aparine)
Black nightshade (Solanum nigrum)
Blue vervain (Verbena stricta)
Bouncing Bet (Saponaria officinalis)
Bracted plantain (Plantago aristata)
Buck brush (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus)
Buckhorn (Plantago lanceolata)
Burdock (Arctium lappa)
Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense)
Carpet weed (Mollugo verticillata)
Catnip (Nepeta cataria)
Chicory (Cichorium intybus)
Chickweed (Stellaria media)
Cocklebur (Xanthium orientale)
Common mallow (Malva rotundifolia)
Common plantain (Plantago major)
Corn cockle (Agrostemma githago)
Creeping Jenny (Convolvulus arvensis)
Daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus)
Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
Dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum)
Dog fennel (Anthemis cotula)
Evening primrose (Enothera biennis)
False mallow (Sida spinosa)
Flower-of-an-hour (Hibiscus trionum)
Gill-over-the-ground (Nepeta hederacea)
Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis)
Heal-all (Prunella vulgaris)
Horehound (Marrubium vulgare)
Horse mint (Monarda fistulosa)
Horse nettle (Solanum carolinense)
Horsetail fleabane (Erigeron canadensis)
Ironweed (Vernonia altissima)
Jimson weed (Datura stramonium)
Knotgrass (Polygonum aviculare)
Lamb's quarters (Chenopodium album)
Late-flowering thoroughwort (Eupatorium serotinum)
Man-under-ground (Ipomœa pandurata)
Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia)
Morning glory (Impomœa purpurea)
Motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca)
Moth mullein (Verbascum blattaria)
Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)
Ox-eye daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum)
Pennsylvania smartweed (Polyganum pennsylvanicum)
Peppergrass (Lepidium virginicum)
Pigweed (Amaranthus rectroflexus)
Poison Ivy (Rhus toxicodendron)
Pokeweed (Phytolacca decandra)
Poor Joe (Diodia teres)
Pursley (Portulaca oleracea)
Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota)
Ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia)
Sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella)
Shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris)
Shoestring smartweed (Polygonum Muhlenbergii)
Small-flowered buttercup (Ranunculus abortivus)
Smartweed (Polygonum hydropiper)
Snow-on-the-mountain (Euphorbia marginata)
Spanish needles (Bidens aristosa)
Spotted spurge (Euphorbia nutans)
Sweet clover (Melilotus alba)
Thorny pigweed (Amaranthus rectroflexus)
Three-seeded mercury (Acalypha virginica)
Trumpet creeper (Tecoma radicans)
Velvet-leaf (Abutilon theophrasti)
Vining milkweed (Gonolobus lœvis)
White clover (Trifolium repens)
White snakeroot (Eupatorium urticœfolium)
White vervain (Verbena urticœfolia)
Wild bean vine (Strophostyles helvola)
Wild geranium (Geranium carolinianum)
Wild lettuce (Lactuca scariola)
Wild morning glory (Convolvulus sepium)
Wild mustard (Brassica arvensis)
Wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa)
Wild sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus)
Wild touch-me-not (Impatiens biflora)
Yarrow (Achillia millefolium)
Yellow dock (Rumex crispus)
IV WEED CONTROL