Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/83

Rh fall into numerous flattened seedlike bodies, or achenia, each one of which is crowned with two or more stiff, needlelike, and barbed awns. Few "stickers" are more annoying than these "beggar's-ticks" of the bur-marigold. There is not a patch of low tangle that is not full of them, and one can scarcely pass by such places without bearing away a closely clinging horde of the pests. In the drier woods of the uplands a familiar species of bur-marigold is abundant, with longer and more slender achenia, which are known as "Spanish needles."

Among the larger burs that gather on us in the fall are those of two composite plants—the burdock and the cocklebur. They are both weeds of waste places, coarse and ill-looking, springing up in rank abundance about pigpens, barnyard fences, and the dump heaps of open lots. The redeeming virtue of the burdock is its purple flower heads crowning the bristly green involucres, which in childhood days were plucked to make "buz-baskets." The larger and coarser cocklebur, with its armament of strong hooks, is another of Dr. Gray's "vile weeds," wrapping itself inextricably among the hair and wool of the dog or sheep that unwittingly strays into its domain.