Ragwort

“ Gradually these joyous spring insects lose their gayness and their brilliancy, as do those which have followed in succession of development with the growing year, and they become senile and faded and are lost as they have progressively fulfilled their function. By this time the ragwort is in bloom, and the thistle displays its pinky blossoms; now the males are to be found numerously exhibiting themselves upon these flowers, and also another equally fresh brood to those of the spring and early summer, of females. ”

“ The flowers grow in flat-topped clusters and are composed of round discs, or “buttons,” of tubular florets only. It is a species not to be mistaken; it has an appearance, an odor, and a taste of its own. It blooms from July until September.
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(A) Golden Ragwort (Senecio aureus) . In late March and early April, Ragwort shows simply a tuft of stemmed, heart-shaped leaves, resembling those of Violets. A little later a stem ascends from the perennial root; a slender, tough, angular, twisting stem that finally reaches heights of 1 to 3 feet. ”

“ The glamour of magic at times hovers over both. Ragwort is St James’s Wort (the French call it Jacobée) , and St James is the patron saint of horses, therefore Ragwort is good for horses, and has even gained the name of the Staggerwort, from being often prescribed for “the staggers.” This is a good specimen [189] of the reasoning, but there is romance about the plant which is far more attractive. Besides being good for horses, it is actually the witches’ own horse! ”

“ They are handsome little creatures, which you cannot possibly mistake for those of any other moth, for they are bright orange in colour, with black rings round their bodies. And sometimes they are so plentiful that they quite strip the ragwort plants of their leaves. When they are fully fed they change into shiny reddish-brown chrysalids on the surface of the ground. ”

“ Are all their seeds feathered?
Tut. Not all. These of the daisy are not. But in a great many species they are.
Har. I should have thought these were a very useful class of plants by the pains nature has taken to spread them, if you had not told us that thistles, and ragwort, and groundsel, were some of them. ”

“ During nine or ten months of the year he subsists entirely on the seeds of many of the most troublesome and noxious weeds and grasses, which infest the fields, more especially those of the ragwort, the dock, and the briar. It is believed, I might almost say ascertained, that he never plucks any kind of grain, even his own loved buckwheat when ripe, from the stalk, but only gleans the fallen seeds from the stubbles after harvest, so that while he in nothing deteriorates the harvest to be ingathered, he tends in the highest degree to the preservation of clean and unweeded fields and farms ”

“ Plants that are liver-shaped, as the herb Trinity, Liverwort, Agarick, Fermitory and Figs, are efficacious in bilious diseases.
Walnuts, Indian Nuts, Leeks and the root of Ragwort, because of their form, are said when duly prepared to further generation and prevent sterility. ”

“ To man, however, they are for the most part troublesome and unsightly weeds. Burdock, thistles, and yarrow, overrun his hedge-banks; dandelion, and hawkweed, which much resembles it, fill his meadows; the tall and branching ragwort, and blue succory, cumber his pastures; and wild camomile, ox-eye, and corn-marygold, 192choke up his cornfields. These plants in general have a bitter nauseous taste, so that no cattle will touch them. Daisies, I believe, are the chief exception. ”

“ There are two generations of this species. The first is on the wing in June, and the second in August, September, and sometimes even in October. An example of each brood is shown on Plate 114, Fig. 3, 1st gen., Fig. 4, 2nd gen. The early moths are larger in size than the later ones, but are fewer in number. Moths of the second generation often abound at the sugar patches, and on ragwort blossom. The colour of {227}the fore wings varies from pale to dark reddish brown in both broods. ”

“ Groundsel is a degenerate composite, far gone on the way of self-fertilization. No class of flowers have been more highly modified to suit the visits of insects than the composites. Hundreds of their tubular bells have been crowded on to a single head, so as to make the greatest possible attractive display; and in many cases the outer blossoms of the head, as in the common yellow ragwort, or in the daisy and the sunflower, have been flattened out into long rays, which serve as pennants or banners to catch the insect eye. ”

“ They are not uncommon insects, and I have found them abundant in sandy spots sporting in the sunshine upon the bare ground, where they run about with great activity, the females chiefly, the males the while disporting 198themselves upon any flowers that may be adjacent, and they are especially fond of Ragwort. ”

“ Well, coltsfoot is a composite, belonging to the same minor group as the common ragworts—its very leaf, indeed, being a good deal like some of the larger ragworts in type, especially those handsome exotics of the race, so much cultivated in greenhouses under the name of cinerarias. But living in cold northern climates, on the banks of streams, in deep clay soil, where it spreads most vigorously, it has learned by experience to accommodate itself to its environment. ”

“ Many weeds afford abundant harvests of this kind; one of the most productive of them is the cut-leaved ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiæfolia) of roadsides and fallow fields, every part of which—foliage, flower, leafstalk, stem, and root—sustains its own peculiar species, the majority of which do not occur on other plants. This plant is especially a mine of wealth to the micro-lepidopterist in the number, beauty, and variety of the species that are partially or wholly dependent upon it. Miss Murtefeldt names between forty-five and fifty species of five orders which she has found on this one plant. ”

“ The seed the gardener holds in his hand is a mystery. He knows what it will produce, but why one phlox seed will produce a red blossom and another a white is to him a miracle. He wonders at the prodigality of nature. In her economy, what is one or ten thousand seeds! She scatters them with lavish hand from ragweed, thistle or oak. If man could make but the single seed of the ragweed, he could make a world. The distance between a pansy and a planet is no greater than between man and a pansy. ”

“ Thus, the Russian maidens still hang round the stem of the birch-tree red ribbon, the Brahmans gather rice, and in Italy rue is in demand. The Scotch peasantry pluck twigs of the ash, the Highland women the groundsel, and the German folk wear the radish. In early times the ringwort was recommended by Apuleius, and later on the fern was regarded as a preservative against this baneful influence. The Chinese put faith in the garlic; and, in short, every country has its own special plants. ”

“ Stamens are three with yellowish anthers. Lodicules are small and fleshy.
This plant occurs widely as a weed of cultivation in black cotton as well as other kinds of soil and shows variation in its leaves and spikelets. In some plants growing in somewhat dry places the leaves are shorter and broader, and those in favourable situations have longer narrower leaves. The spikelets are either perfectly glabrous or pubescent and long hairs may or may not be present on the pedicels. As regards colour the whole plant is green or the exposed portions of stems and spikelets are purplish. ”

“ Thus, species differ widely in resistance to phylloxera, the grape-louse, to the grape leaf-hopper, the flea-beetle, berry-moth, root-worm, powdery-mildew, downy-mildew, anthracnose and other insect and fungous troubles of this fruit.
The structure of the bark is an important distinguishing character for some species, but is of little importance in identifying the variety and has no economic value to the fruit-grower. In most species of grapes, the bark has distinct lenticels and on the old wood separates in long thin strips and fibers ”

“ Clover, corn, cotton, wheat, and barley thrive in the same inclosure; the peach, the apple, the apricot, and the Siberian crab in the same orchard. Herds and flocks graze ten months every year in the meadows over which winter is but a passing breath, and in which spring and autumn meet in summer’s heart. Sugar-cane and oats, rice and potatoes, are extremes that come together under our skies. ”

“ The long pale-green chains at the ends of all the branches hang limp and flexile, shaken with every breath of wind, or, falling over other branches, drape and festoon the whole shrub exquisitely. The catkins of the female shrub are stouter and more rigid than those of the male; but when the fruit is mature, they lengthen out into beautifully tinted clusters of little papery-coated grapes, which are quite attractive in themselves. ”

“ In the Victoria, Cherry, and White Grape, we have decided advances in size, but not in flavor.
CHOICE AND PREPARATION OF SOIL The secret of success in the culture of currants is suggested by the fact that nature has planted nearly every species of the Ribes in cold, damp, northern exposures. Throughout the woods and bogs of the Northern Hemisphere is found the scraggy, untamed, hurdy stock from which has been developed the superb White Grape. As with people, so with plants: development does not eradicate constitutional traits and tendencies. ”

“ This part is not only in the Bean, and the Seeds above mentioned; but in all others: being that which upon the Vegetation of the Seed, becomes the Root of the Plant; which therefore I call the Radicle: by which, I mean the Materials, abating the Formality, of a Root, ’Tis not easie to be observed, saving in some few Seeds, amongst which, that of the Bean is the most fair and ample of all I have seen; but that of some other Seeds, is, in proportion, greater; as of Fœnugreek, which is almost as big as one of its Lobes. ”

“ The organs of vine and fruit are distinctive and easily discerned and there are no nearly related plants cultivated for fruit with which the grape can possibly be confused. Botanists, it is true, have dug pitfalls for those who seek exact knowledge as to the names and characters of the many species, but, fortunately, each of the cultivated species constitutes a natural group so distinct that the grape-grower can hardly mistake one for another in either fruit or vine. ”

“ A bunch of purple grapes can be made to look very beautiful, and if the leaf of the vine is cut out of green silk and veined with sewing or crewel silks the effect is quite startling. It takes time and patience in making the berries to arrive at perfection, and great artistic taste is required to blend the colours, only the dark purples, and for the green grapes, the delicate shades of green. The red mountain ash berries can be made of red wool and are a great improvement on the crewel berries worked flat. ”

“ The spikelets are small, pedicellate, smooth, usually 6 to 14-flowered, pale but often tinged with red, the rachilla is jointed between the flowering glumes, and breaks away from above downwards. The empty glumes are very small, subequal, ovate-oblong, hyaline, obtuse and 1-nerved. Floral glumes also are small but slightly longer than the empty ones, ovate-oblong, obtuse and paleate, palea is linear-oblong with smooth or scabrid keels. Stamens are two with small anthers. Grain is obovoid. ”

“ Leaves are flat. The inflorescence is a raceme or a panicle. Spikelets are one-flowered, borne unilaterally on the branches, and the base is thickened and jointed on the top of a short pedicel. The spikelet has three glumes. The first and the second glumes are subequal, membranous. The third glume is apiculate, hardened in fruit. The lodicules are small and truncate. There are three stamens with linear anthers. Styles are two free, with plumose stigmas. The grain is oblong, free within the hardened glume and its palea. ”

“ The food of the tree sparrow during its stay in the United States is almost entirely made up of seeds. The bird shows an essential difference from its associates, however, in its large consumption of grass seed, fully half of its food consisting of this element.... Nearly two-thirds of the vegetable food that is not grass seed is derived from such plants as ragweed, amaranth, lamb’s quarters, ... and a variety of seeds such as wild sunflower, goldenrod, chickweed, purslane, wood sorrel, violet, and sheep sorrel. ”

“ The oleraceum, Streaked Field-garlic, or Wild Garlic, which is perennial; grows in pastures, meadows, and among corn; and produces whitish-green blossoms in the month of July.—It is eaten by cows, goats, sheep, and hogs:—the tender leaves of this species are usually boiled in soups, or fried with other herbs, and form an wholesome article of food. ”

“ It is well known, that the grass creeps far about under ground, with long white joined roots, and small fibres almost at every joint, very sweet in taste, as the rest of the herb is, and interlacing one another, from whence shoot forth many fair grassy leaves, small at the ends, and cutting or sharp on the edges. The stalks are jointed like corn, with the like leaves on them, and a large spiked head, with a long husk in them, and hard rough seed in them. ”

“ The figures for the whole country are surpassed by those of no other native fruit, and only by corn and tobacco among all the domesticated native plants.
The botany of the grape has been the most perplexing problem to deal with in the preparation of this work. The variability of the grape is so great, and the variations are so often toward closely related species, that it is difficult to tell where one species ends and another begins. ”