Show Out of Doors in the West Sketches of Natural History in the Rocky Mountain Plateau Edited by J. H. Professor of Nature Study In the University of Utah I. Our Wonderful Common Whys and Hows of Weed Study A weed is a plant out of Any plant that directly causes us pain or or that injures stock or is called a however useful or beautiful or interesting it may otherwise A is a plant worthless to the agriculturist though often of great and use in the work of The fall weeds constitute the best part of natures free laboratory for out-door I venture to to all fellow teachers that they take the children of each grade into some nearby field and teach them the some thing of the life history and and some approved method of keeping under the weeds that most harmful in the Weed if engaged in by the would no doubt have the following especially farmers and other practical would aid teachers and pupils with information and pupils would become more alive to their while town councils and other public officials might be stirred up to take some action against disastrous weed Weeds lessen increase farm damage injure dry out the and occasion large financial directly to farmers and indirectly to all other Our Forty It is perfectly legitimate and wholly fruitless to berate the manipulators of stock exchange or those who control trust or corporation or those who the city or the stock jobbers who corner the All of increase prices to the But it would be an immediate boon to the country to prosecute and banish the forty old thieves that thrive at our expense in every For the predatory thefts of these robbers aggregate yearly a loss of untold The larger part of this loss is entirely and the public schools may be under intelligent guidance to save to the people a portion of this annual Let every child report what weeds he has or daily for two he will thereby learn manual and besides doing something that tends to lower the of Essays About Charles Dudley Warner has written some charming nature study essays in his book Summer in A He shows that the of the makes a sorry mess of it and he makes many humor- v ous allusions to comparing and for to original In a recent F. D. shows that while weeds as plants out of place are a great we should the devil his and admit that they have their good most weeds are some are a few are used as many are used as others furnish good forage for Says sometimes grow luxuriantly in places where little else could thus clothing in verdure unsightly They are usually the first barren areas and often prepare and render fit for cultivation the poorer by loosening them with their roots and by adding in their decay the necessary vegetable They are the advance guard of Nature in the reclamation of land but They invade the fallow fields and garden from the and encroach upon the very doorstep of deserted and for a season or so grow In the shadow of their foliage tender tree seedlings spring which later by their shade subdue the This interesting succession of vegetation is readily observed in any abandoned The One of the prettiest and most entertaining of all our common weeds is the little pink flower that covers Western hills with its dainty pattern and lovely Its opening on fair often make whole mountain sides pink near Salt Lake at almost any time from May to Novem This is the pretty little gerani um called the It the best of all of our for late fall Its scientific name is- it is truly an elegant and common species that blooms from earliest spring till latest often covering entire hillsides with its pink which are open only In It also infests lawns to the endless annoyance of It is probably native but as a weed it seems to accompany civilized man in temperate regions wherever he takes up his The leaves are finely dissected The fine seeds have long beaks that sometimes separate and then coil into a corkscrew and float upon a stiff breeze till they seed downward and bore their way into the Then the foliage is often reddish in the the stems are swollen at the colored on the sunnyside and ambitiously reaching the sunlight when growing among other plants or alongside of other Twenty Striking Many other features will be discovered by pupils will be found to differ as to its most striking features whether the fern-like leaves or the round mat they often or the pretty But they should be permitted to report something new about it every day for a numerously divided and fern-like colored stem-less and in many owing to age of sterility of repeated its determination to flower and bear fruit at all fruit resembling a stork's or main flower with from two to six flowers and fruits on as many smaller flower or stems bristly with short horizontal flowering stems arising from leaf axils or from flower five-parted five five separate five stamens with five these being abortive and five styles united into the fruit five root long a which escapes destruction though cut leaflets five to some opposite and some a set of papery and bracts inclosing the flower the seed capels uncoil in a spiral or corkscrew form when the seed carpels have long hairs and the seeds are covered with fine short each petal is three flowers open Only in plant useful as a fodder for sheep and f as a covering or carpet over bare and as a supply Of bird a type Of beauty and striking The seed is barbed and pointed and so Sticks to fur of stealing a The coiled corkscrew acts as a enabling the seed to The coil is beset with long hairs that balance it in the The On the dry benches we still can find the large blunt pods borne on large shrub-like grayish plants with leaves that adhere to whatever they This strange wonder of vegetable life is one of our most elegant and striking desert It has stamens consisting of a mass of golden anthers with long white and five sharp pointed petals The flower is often over two inches the sepals the foliage silvery and It is a regular five-parted flower of two species or a rough branching plant with a beautiful yellow flower open in and found widely dispersed over our dry It holds first place in the It blooms late and its interesting pods may still be It i leaves that stick to hands or cloth-i because of its hooked Study yellow note its mass of tU consider its sticky its beautiful bloom Find glorious desert flower by all many a sem of purest u recently as October the pale V Sow was seen blooming i I sandy It is a wondrous Its from two to three j es made a delicate har- fa with its silvery stems and nj This choice specimen of the 1 rt lands has been previously deft bed in this but the secrets A cross-fertilization and by what p visitors the result is accomplishes to be entirely The at may always be identified by its which is sticky from the feg of barbed fifth grade teachers should make a effort to secure specimens of i h strange autumnal flower of the ij j since it has many obvious j of P The Pen there is the Milkweed with its wondrous we might collect the and notice the five P the five curious with masses of waxy Men in which insects get the peculiar flesh tints of the Now we must be content to the marvelous beauty of the silk covered in the curious the milky the wonderful Don't get it even now for its BEST YOU S now git out the sock count them dollars down fair is almost you must buy a I a high silk tail duster a dude necktie f at's white and Those boys must all have suits Them gals must t gUck We're to put a swagger on To beat the very The is as spry as The harness bright The rig looks like a everything right won't we cut a figger eight Among them swells down You bet we'll all git on a skate At that big county We'll buy a of A bushel of I'll smoke a segar two foot long do some fancy And when we've seen the hull shebang 1 11 take my wad bet That of all earth's menageries The county fair's best yet C. M. |