Shall we pull up a plant and examine the root?  I am afraid we cannot, unless you care to go back to the house for a fork or a trowel.  The Dandelion has a very long strong root—­tap-root—­which goes deep into the ground; and there is no tall main stem of which we can take hold—­the leaves and flower stalks only break off in our hands.

Here is a stalk from which the flower has fallen, leaving only the seed.  Of what does it remind you?  Of the Traveller’s Joy in autumn?  Yes; the Dandelion has what is called a “pappus” attached to its seed, rather similar to the feathery tail of the Traveller’s Joy.  This makes the Dandelion a troublesome weed; the seeds are easily carried by the wind and, if a patch of dandelions is allowed to go to seed, it will produce fresh plants quite far away.  Before the seeds are scattered each head is like a round white fluffy ball.

Here are daisies, with their dainty white florets often tinged with pink.  In the centre of each blossom is a yellow spot.  Every night the white florets fold up over the yellow centre, and do not open until the morning.  This fact explains to us the Daisy’s name; it is the Day’s Eye which opens at dawn and shuts at night.

The Daisy is a little flower which everyone knows and loves, yet in the wrong place it is a weed.  It is a perennial and it spreads very fast.  Of course both perennials and annuals spread by means of their seed, but perennials also spread in other ways as well.  We will see how the Daisy does this.

There; with my pocket knife I have easily dug up a plant.  The root is small and compact, not long like that of the Dandelion.  But, when I try to lift the Daisy plant from the grass, I find that it is still held down by a stout tough thread branching from the root.  This thread is connected with another Daisy plant; from that one there is another thread connected with a third plant.  When we have at last got our plant clear away from the ground, three more are hanging to it by these threads.

That is how the Daisy spreads; it throws out these thread-like shoots from the root, and from these grow another root and plant.  I knew only too well what we should find; there are far too many daisies in my lawn at home, and I found out long ago the way in which they spread so fast.  If daisies are allowed to increase in this way they form large clumps which smother and kill the grass.  We notice that each flower-stem and each leaf of the Daisy springs from a very short underground stem, as those of the Dandelion do.

Daisies and dandelions are plentiful in Ashmead, and so are the yellow buttercups.  There are, however, not quite so many buttercups as you might think at first.  The real name of what we call the Buttercup is the Bulbous Crowfoot, and there is also a Meadow Crowfoot in the field.  A third crowfoot is the Corn Crowfoot.  To-day we will notice one or two differences between the two plants we see here.