Chicory,
Hound's-tongue, Live-forever,
Henbane, Toad-flax,
Pigweed, Sheep-sorrel,
Quitch grass, Mayweed,

and others less noxious. To offset this list we have given Europe the
vilest of all weeds, a parasite that sucks up human blood, tobacco.
Now if they catch the Colorado beetle of us, it will go far toward
paying them off for the rats and the mice, and for other pests in our
houses.

The more attractive and pretty of the British weeds--as the common
daisy, of which the poets have made so much, the larkspur, which is a
pretty cornfield weed, and the scarlet field-poppy, which flowers all
summer, and is so taking amid the ripening grain--have not immigrated
to our shores. Like a certain sweet rusticity and charm of European
rural life, they do not thrive readily under our skies. Our fleabane
has become a common roadside weed in England, and a few other of our
native less-known plants have gained a foothold in the Old World. Our
beautiful jewel-weed has recently appeared along certain of the
English rivers.

Pokeweed is a native American, and what a lusty, royal plant it is! It
never invades cultivated fields, but hovers about the borders and
looks over the fences like a painted Indian sachem. Thoreau coveted
its strong purple stalk for a cane, and the robins eat its dark
crimson-juiced berries.

It is commonly believed that the mullein is indigenous to this
country, for have we not heard that it is cultivated in European
gardens, and christened the American velvet plant? Yet it, too, seems
to have come over with the Pilgrims, and is most abundant in the older
parts of the country. It abounds throughout Europe and Asia, and had
its economic uses with the ancients. The Greeks made lamp-wicks of its
dried leaves, and the Romans dipped its dried stalk in tallow for
funeral torches. It affects dry uplands in this country, and, as it
takes two years to mature, it is not a troublesome weed in cultivated
crops. The first year it sits low upon the ground in its coarse
flannel leaves, and makes ready; if the plow comes along now, its
career is ended. The second season it starts upward its tall stalk,
which in late summer is thickly set with small yellow flowers, and in
fall is charged with myriads of fine black seeds. "As full as a dry
mullein stalk of seeds" is almost equivalent to saying "as nu