. The Indiana weed book. Weeds. WEEDS OP THE THISTLE FAMILY. 165 gray, ribbed, J inch long; pappus of several rows of slender hair-like white bristles. (Fig. 125.) Very common in pastures, along roadsides, fence-rows and in old abandoned fields. June-Sept. One of the worst of pasture weeds, its long basal root-leaves of the first season spreading over and smothering out the blue- grass. The tap-root runs deep and the plant can be easily killed by cutting below its crown. This should be done in the late au- tumn or early spring with hoe or spud; repeated mowing before the seeds ripen is a less
. The Indiana weed book. Weeds. WEEDS OP THE THISTLE FAMILY. 165 gray, ribbed, J inch long; pappus of several rows of slender hair-like white bristles. (Fig. 125.) Very common in pastures, along roadsides, fence-rows and in old abandoned fields. June-Sept. One of the worst of pasture weeds, its long basal root-leaves of the first season spreading over and smothering out the blue- grass. The tap-root runs deep and the plant can be easily killed by cutting below its crown. This should be done in the late au- tumn or early spring with hoe or spud; repeated mowing before the seeds ripen is a less efficient remedy. Armed below with many a stiff spine and prickly involucral scale, the purple head of this thistle is itself more soft and yielding than velvet. To an eye which appreciates solid beauty the first thistle blossom of the year, opening from the apex of the central stalk, is one of the most attractive of our wild-wood flowers. Of what a number of cylindrical rays is it composed! How compactly and prettily are they grouped! "What a soft and delicate expanse they unfold to view! The purple head is erect— a great eye, as it were, gazing up into the blue ethereal depths above— purple looking into blue—and mayhap gathering from the latter a deeper hue to add unto its loveliness. This thistle is the national flower of Scotland, adopted, so the story goes, because it frustrated the capture of that country by the Danes a thousand years and more ago. While stealing upon a Scotch town after night, one of the Danes stepped on a thistle and cried out with pain. His cry awakened the Scots and saved their town. Beneath the Scottish emblem which bears the thistle there is often placed the motto: "No one injures me with ; In England the thistle was also sacred to Thor the god of thunder, and was supposed to be colored by the lightning. To dream of being surrounded by it was considered a propitious sign, foretelling that the person so dreaming would so
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectweeds, bookyear1912
