Wonderful Weeds

I grew up in the middle of nowhere, so each Mother’s Day, I gathered an assortment of wildflowers, scrabbly and mismatched rather than carefully curated from a well-tended garden or florist’s. The bouquet always incorporated shooting stars, wild crocuses, and buttercups, which I ranged across the creek to find. I rounded out the assortment with the more prevalent dandelions, their symmetry and vibrant color – yellow is still my mother’s favorite – distinguishing them as beautiful and worthy of inclusion.

At some point, though, I was horrified to realize I had been gifting my mother WEEDS! Conditioned to follow rules, I didn’t at the time question the categorization of dandelions as such. I knew beauty wasn’t part of the description, since the most noxious interloper at the time was spotted knapweed, a plant I deemed quite lovely in all its purple-flowered glory. Nonetheless, I never considered bringing home a knapweed bunch to feature as the dinner table centerpiece; weeds evoked scorn, not respect. They certainly didn’t belong in a Mother’s Day bouquet.

Since then, however, I have discovered that the definition of “weed” is not a scientific one based on established delineations of measurable, physical characteristics. Instead, it is a cultural one that shifts with geography, circumstances, and time, similar to designations of what constitutes race or family. Merriam-Webster identifies a weed simply as “a plant that is not valued where it is growing.” Consequently, in a world where people claim to prefer expanses of green monoculture, almost any plant can be a weed. While it seems sensible to battle plants that choke out biodiversity and thereby threaten the long-term health of our soil and the related ecosystem of fungi, plants, animals, and air that we rely on for salubrious survival, we seem to apply the term indiscriminately.

Dandelions are a perfect example. They are an astonishingly utilitarian plant and almost all parts of them can be transformed into something beneficial, from salads to teas to wine. The greens are saturated with nutrients, including more vitamin C than tomatoes. If tomato plants started infesting your lawn, would you apply herbicide to eradicate them? Additionally, dandelions have relatively deep roots, which promote healthier soil and provide pathways for water to penetrate, alleviating flooding. Most importantly, though, for this time of year, they are delightfully cheerful, sunnily ushering in longer days.

While not all plants broadly regarded as weeds are as functional as dandelions – some are, in fact, poisonous – the fact that something so useful is regularly destroyed because of a culturally based label should prompt a more thoughtful approach to deciding what we attack. As we prepare our yards for summer, maybe there are varieties of vegetation that deserve a second look, gazing through the eyes of our childhood selves. Although I always preferred the crocuses and the shooting stars, I hope that my mother recognizes that the dandelions I presented to her as a child were actually a better reflection of her: beautiful, resilient, and valuable in every part.