Our Natives are Weeds

 "We have a marketing failure with natives," Doug Tallamy wrote in Nature's Best Hope. While I think the "grow natives" movement is helping correct that, the fact that many natives are called weeds does discourage loving them. 

fireweed, Chamerion

Lots of our native plants are weeds. That is, they have weed in their common name. Fireweed (Chamerion), milkweed (Asclepias), jewelweed (Impatiens), Joe Pye weed (Eutrochium), and ironweed (Vernonia) to name a few. 

Technically, a weed is a plant in the wrong place, or, as the America Society of Weed Scientists defines it, a plant that interferes with human activities. In both cases, there's a strong implication of "bad plant."

swamp milkweed flowers, Asclepias incarnata

Certainly, people do not want fireweeds in their rose garden or milkweeds in their corn fields. But looking at the list of American plants with -weed as part of their name, I suspect that settlers used that term for plants they didn't know a use for, as well as for plants that were a problem. Too often "those weeds" would be all the natives a person knew nothing about, from goldenrods and penstemons to monardas and asters.

Sunflowers (Helianthus), another American group, clearly were lucky not to be called "sunweed." Consider how much more respectable it would be if I took my list and changed weed to flower:  fireflower, milkflowers, jewelflower, Joe Pye flower, ironflower...a so much nicer image than "weed."

ironweed, Vernonia

I think in settlement days, plants were either useful (corn, squash, sunflowers, beans) or weeds, covering pretty much all the rest. English speakers coming to North America had thousands of new plants to name. Life was hard, crops failed a lot, most people had no time or interest in plants that were not crops, so calling them weeds made some sense. It was the category "other," not really a statement about how bad the plant was.

Today though, weed and noxious weed are words for bad plants. Some cost millions of dollars a year to control. Others make outdoor activities much less fun (pulling spiny seeds out of your socks, for example). 

Thus, it is understandable--but very unfortunate--that so many of our native wildflowers come named "weed." 

Searching for plants named -weed, I find a few that are from Europe, for example, field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis), knapweed (three species of Centaurea. However Centaurea cyanus is bachelor buttons which dodged a name with -weed). And of course weed, marijuana, Cannabis sativius. 

weed, marijuana, Cannabis sativus

Those are the minority. Most of the other 53 plants named -weed that I found in the Flora of the Great Plains are American natives, so have gotten an English name in the last 400 years. With -weed in their names, they do not sound like something you want in your yard. 

But really, they are some pretty nice wildflowers 

scorpionweed, Phacelia 

broom snakeweed, Gutierrezia

small soapweed, Yucca glauca

locoweed, Oxytropis

rosinweed, Silphium

I don't have the photos to show you cancerweed, Salvia lyrata, also called lyre-leaf sage, with pretty leavs and light blue flowers link, tarweed genus Madia, which are pretty yellow sunflower relatives link, or blue waxweed Cuphea viscossimosa link but they and dozens of others stuck with -weed in their name, are pretty colorful American wildflowers. Try to really look, not just hear "weed", next time you meet one of them.

gumweed, Grindelia

Most of my photos are midwestern. If you are on the Pacific Coast or the Atlantic Coast, you'll have different examples. 

 

Joe Pye weed, Eutrochium

Comments and corrections welcome.

Post Script: Help badly named plants get a better image; if you know an alternate, more flattering common name, use it. 

Kathy Keeler

A Wandering Botanist

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