Introduced. Biennial. Propagates by seeds.

Fig. 133. -Hare's-ear Mustard (Conringia orientalis). X 1/3.

Time of bloom: May to June.

Seed-time: July to August.

Range: Ontario to Ohio, southward to Virginia.

Habitat: Roadsides, waste places, and about farmyards.

In Europe the leaves of this plant are sometimes used for flavoring food in place of garlic, which they resemble in odor. In this country the plant occasionally flavors milk and butter through being eaten by milch cows.

Stem one to three feet high, rather stout, smooth, erect, and branching. Leaves broadly oval or heart-shaped, sometimes nearly round, coarsely toothed, smooth or with a slight hairiness on midvein and margins, the lower ones six or more inches broad with long petioles, the upper ones smaller and short-stalked. Flowers in short racemose clusters, white, nearly a half-inch broad. Siliques one to two inches long, stiff and four-angled, slender, with valves keeled and three-nerved. Seeds brown, oblong, and ridged, one row in each cell. (Fig. 134.)

Means Of Control

Deep cutting of autumn leaf-tufts from the roots with hoe or spud; cutting or hand-pulling the fruiting stalks before the first flowers mature.