A Farmer’s Warning on the Invasive Thistle

Ritzville, June 6, 1898. Mr. Editor: Observing the very much increased prevalence of the noxious weed known as the Chinese thistle in our fields, our gardens, public roads, as well as in your village streets, alleys, and back yards, I am prompted, by self-preservation as well as a sense of duty to my neighbors, to call the attention of the public to the fact that the county is being overrun by that noxious weed. Unless united and persistent efforts are at once instituted to prevent its further spread, it will ultimately possess the country to such an extent as to make the raising of grain unprofitable. The writer has heretofore been of the opinion that he could keep them under subjection on his own premises, but he now gives it up; on the 4th instant he summer-fallowed two acres of potato land, and he believes that there could not be less than a thousand Chinese thistles, not in bunches, but about equally distributed all over the land. I find them all over and through my grain field, and I fear that harvest will develop the fact that we will have bigger crops of thistles than we have any idea of at present. In looking up the law bearing upon the destruction of noxious weeds, I find that section 4 of the road law, approved March 7, 1893, mandates that the road supervisor must destroy all Canada, Chinese and Bull thistles in his district at least once a year. Respectfully, D. Buchanan.