The Weeds in Your Garden – Are They Good or Evil ?
When exactly did people come up with the idea that weeds were bad? When did a weed become a weed? How it was that one day the world was simple, a Garden of Eden, full of plants, and the next, those plants had been slotted and reduced into a hierarchy of good and evil? Some plants are good. Some plants are just plain evil.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested that a weed is simply “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” A more prosaic dictionary definition describes a weed as a wild plant growing vigorously where it is not wanted; it is an awfully broad concept. One could easily lump valuable native plants with invaders that choke out anything in their path.
Even if you buy the idea that some wild plants are inherently and indistinctly more valuable than others, the lines soon get muddled. Are violets weeds? Jack in the pulpits? Asters? Buttercups? Columbines? Wintergreen? If beauty is in the eye of the beholder then chicory, goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace cannot possibly be weeds. In most cases, as you well know, you know a weed when you see it. Thistles, ragweed, dandelions, plantain, pigweed, burdock . (more…)