Native. Perennial. Propagates by seeds and by stolons.

Fig. 306.-Cotton Rose (Gifola germanica). X1/2.

Time of bloom: Late March to June.

Seed-time: June to July.

Range: Labrador to Nebraska, southward to Georgia and Texas.

Habitat: Dry soil; open woods, upland pastures.

These plants have dioecious flowers and their stoloniferous habit causes them to form broad, dense patches, the fertile and sterile groups commonly distinct but very neighborly. Root-leaves tufted in a small rosette, obovate to spatulate, obtuse, three-ribbed, tapering to petioles, softly white-woolly on both sides but more so beneath; leaves of old plants sometimes become smooth on the upper surface; stem-leaves few, small, and sessile. Stems at first very short but often lengthening to a height of six inches or a foot, the fertile plants being much the taller. Heads in small corymbose clusters, each head less than a quarter-inch broad, the pistillate ones showing two-cleft, crimson styles and when in fruit having the more copious pappus; bracts of the involucre dry and scarious, those of the fertile heads purplish brown at base, with narrow white tips, those of the staminate heads with broad white petal-like tips. After fruiting, the plants spend their energies for the remainder of the growing season in sending out runners with young plants at the tips, which take root and extend the size of the patches. Cattle leave the plant unmolested, and in dry fields and pastures it sometimes "runs out" much of the grass. (Fig. 307.)

Means Of Control

Disk-harrow, fertilize and reseed the hilly pastures in the fall, first removing the thickest patches of the weed by hoe-cutting. Cultivation and rotation with clover is the best remedy for ground not so hilly as to be in danger of washing.

Fig. 307.- Plantain-leaved Everlasting (Anten-naria plantaginifolia). X 1/3.