Useless guide to weeds

and good for nothing sticks

Since we may be living in yet another age of the Great Erasings¹, I am gathering my images and posting what is in the weedy yard this spring.

Carpenter bee on garlic chives.

NAMES and NAMING²

Wild chives or cultivated ones? Weedy or not?

My interest in plant data comes from what I gathered of scientific botany, during years working as a master gardener for the university of Maryland. Then, from childhood in Brasil, my interest in herbs and medicinal plants, where every doctor still tells you to go home, drink tea with ginger and honey for your sorethroat. And make sure your mother prepares you a hot compress for your chest, made with oatmeal and lots of mustard. I was prone to asthma attacks.

We always had and I still have a jar of vick vapor’s rub, pronounced syllabically, like in Japanese, viki vapo rubi, with camphor, eucalyptus oil, and menthol. It was common practice to heat water, place a spoonful of the jelly in it, cover the kettle with a large towel, go inside the tent and breathe…

If that did not work, mother would take us to faraway places to be blessed. I have a clear image of very wrinkled faces, intensive, repetitive chanting, hands in touch, in prayer, deep focus of intention, magic herbs and roots. Scents of mint and eucalyptus.

Mountain mint seed heads, left standing from last year. Pycnanthemum in scientific jargon, also known as Hoary mountain mint or Cherokee sweet mint.

WEEDS BY SCENT

A glorious field at the Fredrick County Community Gardens

Later in the season, a magnet for butterflies like an Eastern tiger swallowtail

The scent of mountain mint brings me to a Brazilian plant from before, vassourinha or alecrim do campo, later classified as Baccharis dracunculifolia, the plant that looks like Bacchus little dragon (the greek god of bacchanals). The plant is used extensively in Brazilian traditional medicine and found a niche in the larger community of western medicine. I know it more for its scent and because it was my dad’s obligatory plant to brush on meat barbecues.

And back to my neighborhood, with the connection to groundsel, labeled Baccharis halimifolia. Viewed as a weedy tree, it grows along the edge of brackish waters, with glorious white color in autumn. Scent and Linnaeum taxonomy linked the two plants, both belonging to Linnean Bacchus trees of botanical knowledge.

While researching plant usage in Brasil, I find that many plants, known by everyone, folksy and otherwise, for their curative properties, have been renamed by using the commercialized Big Pharma labels given to them, like Melhoral (as in Bayer aspirin), Penicilina, Aspirina (from willow or from aralia spinosa, also known as the devil’s walking stick). Relationships with weedy plants continue to evolve…and naming continues to play its many functions.

WEEDS by KNOWING

The best definition of a weed comes from Fernando, the knowledgeable caretaker of a farm I visited many times, in the high mountains of the Mata Atlantica, near the city of Sao Paulo. He defined all plants with ease, telling us about the exact ways in which we could use them… At the end of a long trek crossing the forest and the mountain fields, I asked him: “And this? what is this plant?” Barely stopping, he says “Isso? Isso é pau a toa!”- “This, this is a good for nothing stick.”

Plantain is another medicinal plant that grows everywhere around here. Originally from Eurasia and now naturalized all over the world. Crushed leaves are used topically to reduce swelling.

Plantago virginica

Common plantain (Plantago major)

Heal-all partially replaces lawn, in almost all my walks, with lovely blue flowers in the summer. And from Wikipedia: Prunella vulgaris, the common self-heal, heal-all, woundwort, heart-of-the-earth, carpenter's herb, brownwort or blue curls,^[4][5][6][7] is a herbaceous plant in the mint family Lamiaceae.

PLANTS FOR THE HUMAN TABLE?

Henbit (Lamium sp.) and a recipe for henbit pesto: https://foragedfoodie.blogspot.com/2017/02/henbit-pesto.html

Creeping Charlie, ground ivy...

Glechoma hederacea, is a small little plant that resembles henbit. Known as Creeping Charlie, Gill-Over-The-Ground”, or (if you’re from England) as Alehoof. https://commonwealthherbs.com/ground-ivy-herb-week/

Onze horas, moss rose, purslane, also known as beldroega, or Portulaca oleracea. Highly nutritious, if not sprayed as a weed or as an ornamental.

Fleabane, in full bloom now in many agricultural fields around here. Fleabane (Erigeron) young shoots and flowers are reported to be quite tasty.

Spiderwort, known in many parts of the Americas as an edible and medicinal plant. Later labeled Tradescantia species for merchandising purposes. Here is one labeled virginiana.

Pink primrose. Considered edible by humans, loved by butterflies, moths and hummingbirds. Oenothera speciosa and quite happily invasive here.

Lambs quarters is quite edible by us. Chenopodium album, a cousin of quinoa, (Chenopodium quinoa), both linearly linked through the family of Amaranthacea. https://www.bbg.org/article/weed_of_the_month_lambsquarters

and of course, dandelions!

THE NOT FOR HUMAN SALAD ONES

https://www.eattheweeds.com/buttercups/

Buttercups, like horseradish, engage in chemical warfare. In horseradish the heat one tastes comes from crushing cells that hold two different chemicals apart which are only peppery when they combine. This is to discourage consumption by me, thee and the denizens of nature. The buttercup is similar in that the offending chemical, a glycoside called Ranunculin, is not a problem until the plant’s cells are crushed. Then an almost instant enzyme reaction turning Ranuculin into Protoanemonin, a bitter, irritating, yellow oil. The animals most bothered by buttercups are grazing cows then horses, sheep and pigs, the latter two sometimes suffering paralysis. Humans are rarely poisoned by buttercups because they taste so bad. It is not fatal in small amounts but a significant irritant that can make you ill with gastric distress.

Ah, but so beautiful, as they cover the early fields, food for early beetles and tiny butterflies.

Poison ivy and grasshopper

ENEMIES

And then my former nemesis, Japanese honeysuckle also known as Lonicera. Nemesis because, to my dismay, it happily invaded my yard, taking over and toppling tall pine trees, strangling flowering shrubs… I vowed recently to no longer be at war with this particular conquering emperor! Fragrant, tenacious, inhabited and eaten by many.

1. Like when the great libraries were burned…Google’s generative AI warns me that he is experimental and gives me an illuminative list of library destructions, mostly by fire, set by followers, on the command of rulers…

2. A great resource about plants, naming and the scientific legacies of colonialism is Botany of Empire, by Banu Subramaniam, University of Washington Press, 2024.