Funny how the “weeds” in my yard are full of bees and grasshoppers. Landlord preferred dead grass of course

it’s a botanical/horticultural term for “plant out of place”, horticulture being the cultivation or “culture” of plants within an enclosed space or garden, a space that is smaller, more intensively managed and complex than an agricultural field. it’s use is going to be arbitrary, or at least an artifact of the person considering their own engagement with the space. one of those words that says more about the speaker than what they use it to describe.

it can be a determination by the individual or community and a formal/regulatory or informal designation. and all those things are fraught by politics, imaginaries, and all the other baggage we bring with us when looking at other life forms.

the current sensitivity-oriented guidance is to use the term “introduced” rather than “invasive” for those post columbian-exchange arrivals, which i get, because at least in the states, there’s this bleedover between anti-immigrant sentiment and “invasion biology” eradication language.

i do think it’s hilarious that one of the dominant slang terms for cannabis is literally the designation for “plant that shouldn’t be where it is”, as though anywhere it is found, in any context on earth, is not acceptable. additionally ironic, since landscaping while high was consistently one of my favorite moves.

speaking of lawn/gardening frustration: i hold an advanced degree, multiple formal credentials, have primary author credit on peer reviewed research, and nearly 2 decades of management, intensive consultative and hands on fieldwork experience on the national scope projects and even international in some contexts. my dumbass boomer parents still do not listen to a word i say about lawns, even when my guidance is the most gentle aesthetic change that simply saves them time and money (and helps the local watershed). because chemical company advertising and marketing told them what to think decades ago. it’s doubly pathetic, because i’ve helped many other boomers come around on these things by developing curriculum and giving community lectures with like 1% of the effort i’ve spent on my parents.

“my lawn/garden’s endemic polyculture supports biodiversity in the heavily fragmented and degraded ecosystem of the built environment.” to me, a successful lawn has megafauna. i had a place for a long time that became like a seasonal weigh station for possums. dappled shade, tree fruit trees, lots of low shrubs and pockets of fallen materials to hide in. i was in the middle of a shitshow american suburb but could still see all kinds of stuff just by being quiet on my back porch. it wasn’t fenced in, so the occasional dog-off-the-leash might run through, but all the wildlife could stay hidden and the dog would never see anything. if they got too nosy, i would shoo them off.

My lawn is not weed choked, it supports a diverse ecosystem

And sometimes they want weeds to be not around so much that they blaze it ayooo

Weeds used be a normal thing in gardens until the US had a bunch of newly developed herbicides they wanted to sell in the late 40s and 50s.

Weeds are a social construct.

Damn not even botany can escape critical theory. No but seriously, I’ve done some ethnobotany work, and a lot of it deals with the “weeds” that grow alongside crops, and how they’re gathered and used by the farmers.

Plant & Seed Liberation

I think i just hate gardening

weeds are cool and good, bees love dandelions and clover

Been trying to actively embrace what I understand as an Anishnaabe perspective of the “weeds/invasives” as displaced “kin” of the “desired plants”. Example article: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/9/52/files/2019/09/Reo_Ogden-Anishnaabe-Aki_2018.pdf

In my experience the“desired” prairie plants do a good enough job booting out their “relatives” who have overstayed their welcome, but I’ll help remove the more aggressive ones (bindweed, etc). Even a “desired” plant might get dug up if it’s crowding out everything around it (looking at you, monarda…), but it usually gets rehomed into another patch of garden or with a neighbor. “Noxious weeds” are pulled up but then left in the sun to fully die.

But in general, 99% of the time, the garden takes care of its self- after all it’s been doing this for millennia - as long as the balance isn’t too out of whack. So on that note too, I try to get neighbors (generally defined as anyone who passes the intersection by us) to take seeds/split perennials/cuttings and use them to replace lawns. Otherwise it’s the niche created by a lawn culture which allows “weeds” to thrive and propagate

”What if the sentient plant aliens come to Earth and hear us using the W-word?” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Love me some dandelion salad.

Free the weeds

Call me a Weed and see what happens