All About Weeds

Copyright © 1940, 1957 by Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Copyright © renewed 1968 by Aileen Spencer.

All rights reserved.

This Dover edition, first published in 1974, is an unabridged republication of the expanded edition of the work as published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, in 1957 under the title Just Weeds.

9780486144429

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-91485

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

23051109

www.doverpublications.com

DEDICATED

TO

MY TWO SMARTWEEDS

MALCOLM AND JEAN SPENCER

This new edition is dedicated

to the memory of

EDWIN ROLLIN SPENCER

(1881–1964)

A beloved man and a dedicated naturalist,

scientist and educator

PREFACE

THERE are very few weed books that are of any use to the layman. Those who are prepared to write such books are usually so well versed in taxonomy that they write, if at all, for the botanists; or, if for the layman, they put their work in the form of bulletins. Some very fine bulletins have been published on such subjects as Weeds Used in Medicine, Thirty Poisonous Plants, Unlawful and Other Weeds of Iowa, Red Sorrel and Its Control, White Snakeroot Poisoning, and many, many more. But to find how many men and women interested in weeds have read bulletins on weeds one has only to ask his next door neighbor and take the answer as indicative of the general practice. A survey of the homes in his city block, or of those of his farming community will convince any one that few indeed have seen any of these bulletins and that a much less number have read any of them.

One purpose of this book is to correct all of that. It is hoped that any one who becomes interested in a weed found in his garden or lawn, in wheat field or meadow, by the wayside or in a fence row may, by turning the pages of this book, learn the name of that weed, something interesting about it, and, if it is a bad one, how to get rid of it. It is hoped that an interest in many weeds may be developed in this way, and even a desire to learn to read the technical descriptions.

The author realizes that if the book succeeds as it should it will be largely due to the drawings by Miss Bergdolt. For three years, during the growing seasons, she patiently worked on the subjects suggested, and she redrew a subject every time the author pointed out the slightest defect. Sincerest thanks are due Miss Bergdolt. Thanks are also due Doctor J. M. Greenman, Taxonomist and Curator of the Herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden, for his valuable help, and to Doctor George T. Moore, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, for the free use of the Garden’s library and herbarium. The author wants also to thank his wife, Aileen Hunter Spencer, for her careful assistance in preparing the manuscript.

E. R. SPENCER

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

PREFACE

Table of Figures

I - THE REASONS FOR JUST WEEDS

II - WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

III - WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

IV - WEED CONTROL

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Table of Figures

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I

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.¹ 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, mus-. tard, 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

Barnyard grass

Bermuda grass

Crab grass

Needle grass

Nimble Will

Panic grass

Sandbur

Squirrel-tail grass

Wild barley

Wild garlic

Wire grass

Yellow nut grass

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Bracted plantain

Buckhorn

Chickweed

Common mallow

Common plantain

Creeping Jenny

Dandelion

Gill-over-the-ground

Heal-all

Knotgrass

Moneywort

Ox-eye daisy

Peppergrass

Sheep sorrel

Shepherd’s purse

Spotted spurge

White clover

Yellow dock

WEEDS OF THE GARDEN AND TRUCK PATCH

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Bermuda grass

Cheat

Crab grass

Foxtail grass

Johnson grass

Sandbur

Wild garlic

Yellow nut grass

11. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Carpet weed

Creeping Jenny

False mallow

Flower-of-an-hour

Gill-over-the-ground

Horse nettle

Lamb’s quarters

Morning glory

Pennsylvania smartweed

Peppergrass

Pigweed

Pursley

Shepherd’s purse

Smartweed

Spotted spurge

Thorny pigweed

Three-seeded mercury

Vining milkweed

White clover

Wild lettuce

Wild mustard

Yellow dock

WEEDS OF THE MEADOW AND PASTURE LANDS

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Barnyard grass

Bermuda grass

Broom sedge

Cheat

Crab grass

Foxtail grass

Needle grass

Panic grass

Squirrel-tail grass

Wild barley

Wild garlic

Yellow nut grass

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Blue vervain

Buck brush

Buckhorn

Common plantain

Creeping Jenny

Daisy fleabane

Evening primrose

Goldenrod

Ironweed

Late-flowering thoroughwort

Man-under-ground

Moth mullein

Mullein

Ox-eye daisy

Poor Joe

Queen Anne’s lace

Snow-on-the-mountain

Sweet clover

Vining milkweed

White snakeroot

White vervain

Yarrow

WEEDS OF THE CORN AND COTTON FIELDS

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Barnyard grass

Bermuda grass

Crab grass

Foxtail grass

Goose grass

Johnson grass

Panic grass

Wild garlic

Yellow nut grass

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Canada thistle

Carpet weed

Cocklebur

Creeping Jenny

Dogbane

False mallow

Flower-of-an-hour

Jimson weed

Lamb’s quarters

Man-under-ground

Milkweed

Morning glory

Pennsylvania smartweed

Pigweed

Pursley

Shoestring smartweed

Smartweed

Thorny Pigweed

Three-seeded mercury

Trumpet creeper

Velvet-leaf

Vining milkweed

Yellow dock

WEEDS OF WINTER WHEAT AND CLOVER FIELDS

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Cheat

Crab grass

Needle grass

Wild garlic

Yellow nut grass

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Bracted plantain

Buckhorn

Canada thistle

Common plantain

Corn cockle

Creeping Jenny

Daisy fleabane

Horse nettle

Horsetail fleabane

Man-under-ground

Morning glory

Peppergrass

Poor Joe

Ragweed

Trumpet creeper

Wild bean vine

Wild mustard

WEEDS OF THE FARM LOTS

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Bermuda grass

Goose grass

Johnson grass

Needle grass

Nimble Will

Squirrel-tail grass

Wild barley

Wild garlic

Wire grass

11. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Black nightshade

Blue vervain

Buckhorn

Burdock

Catnip

Creeping Jenny

Dogbane

Dogfennel

Horehound

Horse nettle

Jimson weed

Knotgrass

Lamb’s quarters

Late flowering thoroughwort

Motherwort

Moth mullein

Pigweed

Pokeweed

Queen Anne’s lace

Smartweed

Sweet clover

Thorny Pigweed

White vervain

Wild lettuce

Yellow dock

WORST WEEDS OF WAYSIDE AND WASTE PLACES

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Barnyard grass

Broom sedge

Cheat

Goose grass

Johnson grass

Sandbur

Spiderwort

Squirrel-tail grass

Tall red top

Wild barley

Wild garlic

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Bouncing Bet

Buckbrush

Buckhorn

Burdock

Bedstraw

Canada thistle

Catnip

Chicory

Creeping Jenny

Dogbane

Dog fennel

Evening primrose

Goldenrod

Horehound

Horse mint

Horse weed

Milkweed

Moth mullein

Mullein

Poison ivy

Queen Anne’s Lace

Trumpet creeper

Wild lettuce

Wild parsnip

Wild sunflower

Yellow dock

WEEDS OF MOIST AND WET PLACES

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Barnyard grass

Calamus

Panic grass

Spiderwort

Yellow nut grass

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Carpet weed

Man-under-ground

Moneywort

Shoestring smartweed

Small-flowered buttercup

Smartweed

Wild morning glory

Wild touch-me-not

Yellow dock

WEEDS OF SPRING TIME

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

(The weeds that bloom and seed in the spring are not a great many. Most of the weedy grasses are then to be seen as green blades only. The grasses here given are those that starts early enough to attract attention.)

Broom-sedge (seen as bunches of blades)

Johnson grass (seen as bunches of blades)

Squirrel-tail grass

Tall red top (seen as bunches of blades)

Wild barley

Wild garlic

Wire grass

Calamus

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

(These weeds bloom and many of them seed in the spring.)

Bedstraw

Carpet weed

Chickweed

Common mallow

Corn cockle

Dandelion

Gill-over-the-ground

Horehound

Moneywort

Morning glory

Ox-eye daisy

Peppergrass

Queen Anne’s lace

Shepherd’s purse

Small-flowered buttercup

White clover

Wild geranium

Wild parsnip

WEEDS OF SUMMER

(Weeds that bloom and seed in summer.)

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Barnyard grass

Bermuda grass

Crab grass

Goose grass

Johnson grass

Needle grass

Panic grass

Sandbur

Squirrel-tail grass

Wild barley

Wild garlic,

Wire grass

Yellow nut grass

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

(Summer is the weed season, and nearly all of our weeds, even those that bloom in the spring, bloom again in summer. Only the most conspicuous weeds of the season are listed here.)

Black nightshade

Blue vervain

Bouncing Bet

Burdock

Canada thistle

Chicory

Daisy fleabane

Dog fennel

Evening primrose

Horsetail fleabane

Horse weed

Ironweed

Lamb’s quarters

Man-under-ground

Milkweed

Mullein

Pennsylvania smartweed

Pigweed

Poison ivy

Pokeweed

Pursley

Ragweed

Snow-on-the-mountain

White vervain

Wild lettuce

Yarrow

WEEDS OF AUTUMN

(Weeds that bloom or seed in the fall.)

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Barnyard grass

Broom sedge

Nimble Will

Panic grass

Sandbur

Tall red top

Wild garlic

II. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Buckbrush

Canada thistle

Cocklebur

Dandelion

Dogbane

Goldenrod

Horse weed

Late-flowering thoroughwort

Man-under-ground

Mullein

Poison ivy

Pokeweed

Shoestring smartweed

Spanish needles

White snakeroot

Wild sunflower

WEEDS OF WINTER

(Most of the .rummer and autumn weeds that have woody stems may be seen as dead stalks throughout the winter, but the weeds of the winter here given are seen as green plants.)

I. WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

Johnson grass (in the south)

Tall red top

Wild barley

11. WEEDS THAT ARE NOT GRASSLIKE

Chickweed

Dandelion

Moth mullein

Mullein

Ox-eye daisy

Peppergrass

Shepherd’s purse

Sweet clover

White clover

Wild parsnip

Yarrow

II

WEEDS THAT ARE GRASSLIKE

FIG. 1. Broom Sedge, a grass and not a sedge

BROOM-SEDGE

[Andropogon virginicus L.]

BROOM-SEDGE, or Broom-sage as the Southerner calls it, is neither a sedge nor a sage. It is a