opinion

What is really a weed?

One of the most fundamental questions a gardener or forester needs to answer is this: What is a weed? The classical answer is that a rose is a weed in a wheat field and wheat is a weed in a rose garden. In the real world it isn’t quite that simple and complications quickly get worse when one decides to do something about them.

Generally speaking, we think of a weed as something we don’t want to have growing where we intend to grow something or nothing else. For those who are committed to putting-green lawns, for example, everything other than one species of grass is unwelcome. This would include clover.

But a vegetable gardener is likely to see clover as beneficial, because it captures nitrogen from the air and fixes it on root nodules, making the nitrogen available to other plants. Moreover, clover attracts pollinator insects which also pollinate garden crops. This element makes clover even more attractive to beekeepers.

Nor is this division limited to plants. A lawn purist is apt to think of moles as pests due to their unsightly tunneling, whereas an organic gardener recognizes the benefit moles confer by eating Japanese beetle and June bug grubs and aerating the soil to allow better distribution of rain.

Whatever side you might choose in the “what is a weed” debate, the important point is to recognize that your answer is highly subjective, and your solution consequential.

Enter the idea of invasive species. “Invasive” has become something of a four-letter-word in recent decades, driven in substantial measure by a chemical company. The most visible local example is certainly kudzu, a vine first intentionally planted to stabilize bulldozed embankments. Southern farmers were once paid $8 per acre to plant kudzu which seems intent on casting a net over the entire region. But there are other galloping interlopers, both intentionally and inadvertently set loose in our midst.

English ivy, still sold by some nurseries, is a classic; imported for its lovely evergreen glossiness and given a fancy pedigree by its ivy-league college association. It is as damaging a plant as can be easily imagined — killing trees, pulling down limbs, digging into buildings, separating brick from mortar and siding from frame. It is structurally far more threatening than kudzu could ever hope to be. But there are other plants available for purchase deemed to be armed and dangerous: butterfly bush, wisteria, money plant, dandelions and so on and so forth.

In the end whomever owns or manages a yard, a garden or a woodland is the decider, and decides what to do. For many deciders, glyphosate has become the weapon of choice in curbing the invaders. Better known as RoundUp, glyphosate is a very effective plant killer, so it is no wonder that its parent company, Monsanto, has been an enormous advocate of labeling many plants as invasives.

But European scientists have determined glyphosate is a likely carcinogen and Bolivia has canceled DEA spraying of cocaine fields, due to the human impact. Now California has required carcinogenicity to be included on the product’s label. Meanwhile birth defects in farm animals exposed to the stuff have been widely reported.

Ultimately every terrestrial plant and animal could be called invasive since we all climbed out of the ocean at some point in the very remote past. Spores and seeds and vines and creepy things have moved from place to place as continents rose and split and drifted and collided. Even we humans.

My point being this: is it worth killing yourself and your kids in an effort to eradicate something someone else has told you is a weed? Or mightn’t we leave the poison on the shelf and simply relabel many weeds as wonderful wildflowers?

Cecil Bothwell is a member of Asheville’s City Council, liaison to the Asheville Tree Commission, and author of Garden My Heart: Organic Strategies for Backyard Sustainability (Brave Ulysses Books, 2005).