Leave it to HN to get me to buy a book about weeds.
What Is a Weed?
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Re: What Is a Weed?
#12Same sort of question: what is a byproduct?
What is a side effect?
Re: What Is a Weed?
#13my uncle with an ag degree has always said “a weed is any plant in a place you don’t want it.” I’m getting better at accepting this and moving / pulling things that may be beautiful but have outgrown their spot in my yard.
My dad, who grew up on a farm, always said the same thing.
Re: What Is a Weed?
#14Leave it to HN to get me to buy a book about weeds.
Can you link the book? I guess I ran out of "free" new yorker articles
Re: What Is a Weed?
#15Re: What Is a Weed?
#16personally I try to grow as much clover in my grass as possible. it has so many benefits: it uses a bit less water and stays more green without nitrogen inputs and can even help fix a little bit of nitrogen in the soil. then I use both the grass and clover, when I cut it, as a nitrogen source to top the soil with.
My lawn is a mix of grasses, clovers (red and white), moss, lichen, and of course dandelions and a few other things I don't know the names of.
Most of the time it's beautiful, except when the dandelions are doing overtime shooting up flower stalks.
Re: What Is a Weed?
#17> Ralph Waldo Emerson described weeds as plants “whose virtues have not yet been discovered" Agreed!
I certainly haven’t discovered any virtues in poison oak.
How about inspiring humility about your place in the ecosystem? :p
https://www.saanoadventures.com/saanoadventures-blog/2016/3/...
Re: What Is a Weed?
#18Douglas Fir. Not a weed when over 100 years? Definitely a weed when 100s of seedlings sprout in my garden each spring?
True. I get the same volunteers (+ thuja + bigleaf + etc) and put quite a few of them into pots.
Eventually though, doug fir reverts back to a sort of weed status later on, when the accumulated effects of human fire suppression causes doug fir to start crowding out other species and interferes with the typical succession pattern. Harder to notice in the PNW, but if you look at NorCal especially, there are areas that would typically be a more open woodland with (say) oak. Instead these are jam-packed with doug fir due to lack of fire. From the perspective of anyone (whether human, animal, or plant) who misses the pre-suppression woodland state that's normally regulated by regular "good" fire, doug fir is indeed a weed. There normally isn't _this_ much of it stretching all the way from Alaska to Mexico.
Re: What Is a Weed?
#19Leave it to HN to get me to buy a book about weeds.
Can you link the book? I guess I ran out of "free" new yorker articles
https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Weeds-Opportunism-Resistance-Fo...
also there is a browser extension for this kind of thing.
Re: What Is a Weed?
#20Douglas Fir. Not a weed when over 100 years? Definitely a weed when 100s of seedlings sprout in my garden each spring?
Same with Tulip Poplar. It's a very nice tree, I don't need 500 of them in my landscaping every spring, thanks.