Sorry Tumblr, but after trying you out for a while and having several service interruptions and problems formatting and posting posts, we are moving back to blogspot.
Dear followers, bookmark our old-new address: WEEDS EVERYWHERE (on blogger)
The posts made here will be moved over there, unless they already are duplicated. This blog will be removed in a few weeks.
The weed yarrow is a native here in the US, but it is also present in Asia and Europe. It has been used medicinally for a long time. Its botanical name, Achillea millefolium (Asteraceae), is of course after the Greek god Achilles, and millefolium after a ‘thousand leaves’ since the leaves are so finely dissected. When I was a kid in Sweden, they told us stories how in the old times, school kids would take a piece of the leaves, which have sharp tips on each little leaflet, and put it in their nostrils before a boring class at school. A while in during the lesson, the kid would just slightly touch its nose, and a profuse nosebleed would start, and wow, the kids got immediately excused from class.
Yarrow is also cultivated here in the US, so it is one of those weeds that the horticulturalists can’t really decide if it is good or bad. Maybe it is just an interesting plant?
[Image from Lindman’s Bilder ur Nordens Flora (Swedish), public domain]
‘Coal and Ice’ (Seamus) on Flickr took this great photo of weed removal tools, and also wrote a long and insightful piece as part of the photo description. Head over to Flickr and read it here. [Photo (c) Coal and Ice, Flickr]
Do you know all the tools? There is a scythe, string trimmer, Ryobi, grass whip, clippers, Fux, weed cutter, corn knife… Coal and Ice has it all explained in his post on Flickr.
From dusty, dry Texas roads (I imagine), artist and art professor Beverly Penn gathers weeds and uses them as inspiration for her exquisite metal sculptures.
The statement for her 2006 show puts both weeds and society in perspective:
“At least since the advent of agriculture in the Neolithic Age, humans have been attempting to control and improve nature, a process that increased in magnitude and momentum during the industrial period. We created machines that are quicker and stronger than we are, and modes of transportation, communication and building construction that are ever more rapid and more predictable. In the wall-hung sculptures that comprise Weeds, artist Beverly Penn addresses the sacrifices that accompany these capabilities, such as escalating energy emissions, disappearing forests, and compromised personal privacy and identity.” [source]
More of her works at Lisa Sette Gallery. There are several plant species used in her work, at least thistles (Cirsium?, Asteraceae) and knapweed (Centaurea, Asteraceae), but also others. I would have to look at them closer to be able to guess better.
A giant field full of dandelion heads releasing their seeds in the wind, who would have thought of that as an ad for GM? Link to image and info: Print advertisement for GM China by Bates Advertising. I guess GM wants the symbolism of all the green, as in green = good, or is it something about weeds spreading far and taking over?
(species: Taraxacum officinale, Asteraceae)
Dandelion Corporation is an advertising company in Newport Beach, CA, USA has a homepage with a dandelion on it. ‘Like dandelion fruits we want to spread our ads through the air’, or something like that. They actually didn’t say that, it is my interpretation on why you would want to pick Dandelion as your company profile. Millions of little downy parachutes sailing effortlessly through the air, spreading your marketing efforts. Here is the homepage, and I especially like the soil on the bottom.
Species: dandelion (Taraxacum officinale, Asteraceae)
From an article in New York Times, about how the high crop prices are making farmers plow and put golfcourses and old, unused farmland into agriculture again:
In Iowa, the nation’s biggest producer of corn and soybeans, farmers insist that they are simply getting more value from their land. Darrell Coddington, a farmer who runs an excavation business, has spent much of the past year clearing additional land in the hilly and wooded southern part of the state, including places that used to be left alone and derided as a “cocklebur farm,” referring to the thorny weed.
Cocklebur (Xanthium strumarium) is a very interesting-looking plant. It is in the Asteraceae, the sunflower family, but the fruits are covered with horrid, sharp spines (easy to get around if you are stuck to an animal!). It used to be the perfect food for the now extinct parrots of the South; now however, it is an invasive weed that loves rich and often sandy soil. It is a nasty thing to step on and is also toxic. Any good features? Sure, it makes a yellow dye and it repels pests from crop plants close to it.
From the 2011 report on the potential long-term effects of climate change in New York State (pdf here, very interesting read):
“Carbon dioxide fertilization tends to preferentially increase the growth rate of fast-growing species, which are often weeds and other invasives.”
“Increased weed and pest pressure associated with longer growing seasons and warmer winters will be an increasingly important challenge.”
The tiny lumber town of Weed in California got its name after Abner Weed, and they have a Weed Historic Museum (another link). Of course, the museum is not about weeds, but about the town, but I wonder how Abner Weed got his name in the first place.
If you do a search for the last name Weed on FamilySearch.org, a genealogy website, you get over 130,000 people named Weed. But the same person is listed several times, since Abner Weed has over 6000 hits, and many might be the same person listed several times.
He was born in Maine, moved to California, and the 1910 US Census list a rather mixed group of people in his household; his wife Rachel and himself, both 67, and 9 males of 18-35 years of age. None of them had his last name, but non-English names such as Yuck Wa Wong, Franz, Luigi Panzera, and Florence Rossi - I wonder if they were workers renting rooms from the Weed family.
Another entry in the 1910 census listed Abner and Rachel and two sons. And a third census entry, under his son’s name, lists his father, and another giant row of mill workers.
Hard to keep track of all these Weeds for the census workers back then. So some research is needed to really figure out who lived with who…
“In its early days, Weed was like other towns of the wild west. Weed acquired a bad reputation, which later was used to vilify it for many years. The Redding Free Press described Weed as the “Sodom and Gomorrah of Siskiyou County.” That description was not without some justification. Whiskey, cards, a pocket full of money, or an empty pocket, and a beautiful woman occasioned many of the joys and also the tragic events of the town. Gun shot wounds and murder were occasional happenings.” (source)
The world’s largest sawmill was here in the 1940s, says Wikipedia.
[Image by Corey Denis, Flickr, Creative Commons license]
From the course catalog at Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, Princeton, NJ, a 1-day workshop on Wildflowers and Weeds on Jan 21, 2012:
During a brisk 2-hour morning walk on the Watershed Reserve trails, Jeff will introduce a wide variety of plants, sharing their natural history while offering identification tips. Participants will also collect specimens during the walk for later use in the studio. After lunch (please remember to bring a sack lunch; hot beverages will be provided), the group will spend time with specimens gathered in the morning, studying and sketching them under Ruth´s guidance. Then, as time permits, students will develop a finished piece based on one or more sketches. Topics such as tonal values, light on form, composition, and techniques for achieving various textures will be covered, with ample one-on-one support offered between instructor and student. Participants should come dressed for wintery weather on the trails. Registration is exclusively through the Arts Council of Princeton; for more information and to register, please visit www.artscouncilofprinceton.org. For more information about Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association, visit www.thewatershed.org.
Seeing nature’s beauty in the dry, cold, grey winter is not the easiest, but it is there, and this workshop can really open up your eyes to the gorgeousness of flowers and plants of seasons past.
You don’t often see weeds such as dandelion (Taraxacum officinale, Asteraceae) featured in contemporary art, but here is an example by Amy Jean Porter. A school girl floating free against a summer sky and with dandelions on each side. Beauty in everyday common features, maybe - from the weedy plant to the school uniform and the very common clouds. The text on the painting, “As pretty as a poem, was Mary”, could be implemented as sarcasm or the truth, whichever way you want to see it. Who knows what the artist thought, but this is my take on it.
Reposted from here.
Jane Kramer writes about her foraging adventures in Europe in The New Yorker article The Food at Our Feet. On the New York Times blog City Room, they have a series in Urban Foraging by Ava Chin, writing about purslane picked from the sidewalks of the city, and much more.
Gorgeous weed in the sunflower family (Asteraceae) with a very weedy name: daisy fleabane. It is a member of the very large genus Erigeron, and the species is Erigeron annuus. Each white ray and each little yellow dot is an individual flower, so what looks like one flower is actually hundreds of flowers in a head, which is typical for the sunflower family.
It has been used to repel insects (therefore fleabane!), and also for many other medicinal purposes. This photo is from southern New York State, but it is a common weed in most parts of the United States.
Reposted from here.
“Our attitude towards plants is a singularly narrow one. If we see any immediate utility in a plant we foster it. If for any reason we find its presence undesirable or merely a matter of indifference, we may condemn it to destruction forthwith.”
Rachel Carson
There are weeds of all kinds - small, large, smelly, delicious, toxic, floating, flying, native, invasive, green, red, blue, succulent... This is a blog about the horror and beauty of weeds, their biology and science, how they have been used in art, cooking, medicine, and other human pursuits. Any aspect of weeds, these often so misunderstood plants, will be highlighted here. But, this blog is not about the plant that goes under the name weed (Cannabis), even if that is also a weed in parts of the world.
Any use of any weeds or other plants for any purpose is at your own risk. Plants can be toxic, tasty, allergenic, spiny, and all have little chemical factories inside their green parts. It is a great thing to know your plants, so you know which ones that are harmless and which ones that can hurt you. Knowledge is really worth it.
