BUCKWHEAT FAMILY
Reading edition
Lady’s Thumb, Heart’s Ease Polygonum pennsilvanicum
Plate 8, fig. 4
The flowers of this plant are small, but they are grouped to form brilliant rose-colored spikes an inch or two long. The plants are 2-5 ft. high and are found in wet ground and dried-up ponds and hence are often pests in grain fields during wet years. They are found at 3000-5000 ft. and bloom all summer. The Heart’s Ease is valuable as a honey plant and its seeds occur as a common impurity in clover seed.
Golden Buckwheat Eriogonum Jamesii
Plate 8, fig. 5
The tiny whitish to yellow flowers of the Golden Buckwheat are clustered in round heads at the tips of stiff gray-green stems. The 16 latter have a bunch of leaves at the base and hence form dense mats in gravelly soil on plains and in the foothills at 4000-9000 ft. The flower clusters are conspicuous throughout the summer.
Crimson Wings Rumex venosus
Plate 8, fig. 8
The name Crimson Wings is applied to this dock on account of the brilliant rose-colored calyx. The latter becomes enormously enlarged as the flower goes to seed and thus forms a device for the carriage of the seed by the wind. The low plants grow in sandy soil at 4000-8000 ft. and bloom in spring and early summer. This species has no value except possibly as an ornamental, but other species of the genus are cultivated for salad, and several of the wild species furnish excellent “greens.”