The word “weed” generally refers to a plant not valued for use or beauty, that grows wild and rank, and hinders the growth of superior vegetation. One dictionary defines weed like this:
Unprofitable, troublesome, or noxious growth, a plant considered to be a nuisance. The word commonly is applied to unwanted plants in human-controlled settings or any plants that grow and reproduce aggressively and invasively.
In other words, a plant smart enough to know how to survive no matter what, that takes advantage of whatever the world offers it to live.
I’ve been weeding in the Vedanta garden where I go on retreat, often wondering what to pull, and what to keep. The roses and azaleas, I know are keepers, and the iris, just past, and the lavenders. The intruding grasses have got to go, but just a few yards away in the meadow they are native, at home, welcome.
Poppies as well, although once they invade the cultivated beds they make themselves quite at home because, well, they are at home. This is their turf, as it is for plantain and clover, mullein and dandelion. I grab a handful of bindweed, amazed by its tenacity and the range of its roots, and find myself mentally apologizing to it when I toss it on the dead pile.
I want to applaud all these weeds for their cleverness in snuggling up close to the cultivars, the “superior vegetation” that receives regular watering, where they can for awhile at least, mask themselves and drink their fill. That is, until some human with an attitude—like me, for example—comes along and yanks them out.
It’s true, though, that the stunning show of the exotics’ white and bright red, deep purple and orange against the greens of the garden shows the glory of flowers more vividly than the subtle shades of the dry dirt natives, but who is likely to survive when the water and the weeders run out? Given a season or two of non-interference, I know which plants are likely to still be here, providing medicine for the soil, and which plants will have dropped their leaves in a last, sad hurrah?
Plaintain: skin abrasions, laxative. Clover: antispasmodic, anticoagulent, diuretic. Mullein: sedative, anti-inflammatory. Dandelion: liver tonic, diuretic…
So who decides who gets to stay and who gets to go, and by what criteria do we make our decision?
The big-time industrial ‘weeders’ cut down whole forests and shoot wolves from helicopters. Bears are almost gone and puffins have gone extinct. Our local police shot a coyote who wandered into Berkeley one night, and I’m told that once eagles flew up in our hills.
Maybe we are the weeds, the noxious intruders who have reproduced aggressively and invasively, hindering the growth of a superior and diverse community.
Personally, I consider us humans rather gorgeous and remarkable additions to the world scene, but still in an infantile stage that doesn’t yet know when it’s right to interfere with the natural order, and when it’s simply stupid to do so. Making a garden with your favorite exotics is fine by me; introducing invasive species that take over the eco-system is not. Splitting the atom, or tinkering with the DNA of the world, is not. We have to think about how it all goes together—or even that it all goes together!
Balance—it’s all about balancing with the world, neither weeds nor weed pullers, but equal members of the whole community, benefiting and being benefited in turn.
Whatever made us ever think otherwise?
First published in Musings on the Passing Scene: From the Notebooks of Carolyn North, 2011–2014.
