The hairy bittercress is popping up all over our yard. First the rosette of leaves, then the stalk and tuft of tiny white flowers. I’m never in a rush to pick them because I think they’re cute and I always say to myself that I’ll harvest them later to make a salad or pesto. I’m yet to do that. And once you’ve waited too long the seed pods mature – looking like tiny snap peas – and at the lightest of disturbance they’ll explode, spreading thousands of bittercress seeds across the yard.
I’ve been thinking a lot about weeds lately. For the past few months, a book that I want to write about weeds has been taking shape in my head. I haven’t written a chapter of it yet but my notebooks are full of sentence fragments and notes and ideas for research. My desk is covered in weed-related books. I’ve been so inspired and intrigued by the things I’ve learned in these books and I wanted to share some of my favorite parts with you.
Lives of Weeds by John Cardina uses eight common weeds in America to tell stories of evolutionary biology, history, botany, economy and ecology. In his introduction to the book, he already blew my mind with this insight on the beginnings of agriculture:
Those first ingenious farmers scattered seeds and buried shoots but returned after a few months to find fields full of unruly thistles and grasses, not harvestable crops. The essential feature that led to settled domestic living was the need to hunker down and engage in constant weed removal…Thus, it was weeds – not crops – that compelled people to settle down and demand their repeated attention.
According to Cardina, weeds didn’t just follow us around. Weeds made modern society!
Reading Cardina’s book also made me curious about how we know what weeds were growing in certain places at certain times. Were dandelions growing in Pennsylvania in 1700? Or 1400? How can we find out? In Richard Orlando’s Weeds in the Urban Landscape, he writes about scientists can track historic plant migration by looking in peat bogs and lake beds. Those are the best places for researchers to find deposits of ancient pollen which they can analyze to find out which plants that pollen came from. Additionally, Orlando writes about how they’ve been able to track when weeds arrived in various parts of California through studying the pollen residues on adobe bricks used to build pueblos and missions.
I picked up a used copy of A Modern Herbal, a two volume set published in 1931 by Maud Grieve. As the cover explains, this book is packed with “the medicinal, culinary, cosmetic and economic properties, cultivation and folk-lore or herbs, grasses, fungi, shrubs & trees with their modern scientific uses.” I’m always drawn to encyclopedic books about plants and I immediately flipped to the section regarding dandelions, one of my favorite weeds. There I found a thorough six and a half page entry where Grieve describes the plant, notes its medicinal uses, shares how its been used through history and even gives tips on preparation. I especially love this simple recipe she includes:
Young dandelion leaves make delicious sandwiches, the tender leaves being laid between slices of bread and butter and sprinkled with salt. The addition of a little lemon-juice and pepper varies the flavour. The leaves should always be torn to pieces, rather than cut, in order to keep the flavour.
I can imagine seeing “torn dandelion leaf sandwich” on the menu at a fancy restaurant.
While perusing the bibliography of Richard Orlando’s book I learned about Wild Green Things in the City: A Book of Weeds, written and illustrated by Anne Ophelia Dowden. Dowden was a skilled botanic illustrator and writes beautifully about weeds through the seasons in New York City. I was especially moved by this section from her first chapter:
What do we call them – wild flowers or weeds, a joy or a nuisance, loved or unloved? They are the orphan plants of a great city – the neglected, the trampled upon, the underprivileged. But isn’t it cheering to see a small but beautiful dandelion fighting its way to sunlight between a brick, a bottle, and a tin can in some dingy vacant lot; or a milkweed shoot breaking through an asphalt driveway by its sheer urge to be alive?
As I continue to learn about weeds, I realize how much more there is to learn. Every new book ends with another bibliography full of even more books about weeds. There are so many different ways to define a weed or place them in a historical context. And that’s why plants never get boring to me. Learning about botany and horticulture is a never ending pursuit. There are constantly opportunities to dig into new areas of knowledge and unearth incredible things.
Do you have a favorite weed? Or a favorite book about weeds? I’d love to hear about it.
And one more thing: The Philadelphia Flower Show starts this Friday, March 2nd and I’ll be heading there on Monday. Stay tuned for updates coming next week. Until then, here’s a video I filmed at last year’s show:
Dan Masoliver beat me to it! Richard Mabey's Weeds, The Story of Outlaw Plants is absolutely wonderful.
I was just going to say the same as Dan - anything by Richard Mabey is excellent. Also Jack Wallington's Wild About Weeds is EXCELLENT too. And jack is here on Substack too