Richard Mabey's book reviewed in NY Times

The book WEEDS: in Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants by Richard Mabey is reviewed in New York Times today.  It is great review, but once again there is a common mistake in how evolution works by the writer of the review (and maybe also by Mabey, I am not sure since I haven't read the book yet):

"One can’t help being impressed by weeds’ ingenuity. They’ve grown hooks, burrs, spines, rib hairs and a sort of glue to move their seeds around."

Weeds haven't grown these things.  Plants that had these characters, evolved from genetic variation and mutations over a long time, became weeds because of them.  To become a weed is a secondary thing, not something that forces a plant in a certain evolutionary direction.  

It is interesting though how our weed project hits exactly the same notes as Mabey's book.  History, culture, biology, medicine, and the misunderstood weeds connecting it all.

Richard Mabey interview on NPR

British author Richard Mabey was interviewed by NPR about his new book and it was aired yesterday.  He has a refreshing take on weeds, or as NPR phrases it: "In Defense Of Botany's Cockroach".  I am not sure I would call weeds cockroaches at all, because first weeds do usually not live inside our houses, and second, do not usually run over our foods and clean counters and spread germs and disease.  Weeds are a lot better than cockroaches.  They are more interesting too, and I say this from personal experience after living in a cockroach infested apartment in the Bronx in the 1990s. (We had mice, bats, snakes and squirrels intermittently in the apartment too, but that is another story for another time).

"And while many might think of them as pests, British nature writer Richard Mabey prefers to think of them as "vegetable guerrillas" and "forest outlaws." Mabey's new book, Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants, is a spirited defense of weeds."

Read the interview, is is great.   Mabey also correctly points out that the most weedy species on earth is in fact, us humans:

"Weeds, as a type, are mobile, prolific, genetically diverse. They're unfussy about where they live, adapt quickly to environmental stress, use multiple strategies for getting their own way," Mabey writes in his book. "It's curious that it took us so long to realize that the species they most resemble is us."

Why We Must Learn to Love Weeds

On June 4, Wall Street Journal published an interesting, great and refreshing article on weeds by Richard Mabey, titled "Why We Must Learn to Love Weeds".  It highlights that what is a weed in one place can be a beloved plant in another, so the tag 'weed' depends on circumstances and not a specific species.  Houston in Texas, USA, has even tried to outlaw weeds, by making weeds illegal, in their law saying:

"the existence of weeds, brush, rubbish and all other objectionable, unsightly and unsanitary matter of whatever nature covering or partly covering the surface of any lots or parcels of real estate."

Think about that for a while.  You are outlawing plants that try to grow in or cover anything that humans have made.  That really sets up the fight, man vs. weed.  Since the only plants that can grow in many human-made environments are by definition weeds, this law declares war on a large branch on the Tree of Life. Is that what we want? Is that necessary?  And don't we have more important things to do than spraying pesticides in artificial environments were we live?

Richard Mabey continues:  

"All of these definitions view weeds entirely from a human perspective. They are plants that sabotage human plans. [...] But is it conceivable that they might also have a botanical, or at least an ecological, definition?"  

Maybe weeds follow us humans because we make places where these plants thrive?  Maybe we 'make' the weeds? I don't think there is a botanical definition that fits all weeds, but plants that lived in disturbed ecological habitats are certainly often weeds.  But even a definition as 'disturbed habitat' requires a human input, since soil disturbance due to a landslide, for example, would lead to a new succession in habitats with new pioneer plants, and not suddenly be seen as a weedy area.  I think the 'weed' definition is in the eye of the beholder, in us humans.

The article addresses further our view of weeds in our cultures, how they are symbolic of evil even in childrens' books like Harry Potter and science fiction.  How many of them have been or become useful plants for things like crops, medicine, or soil improvement. Weeds move around, and homogenizes an Earth we humans have changed and made less natural over the last centuries.

Richard Mabey really puts the weeds into a wider perspective in this article which is an excerpt from his new book (which I will have to get).  He ends his article:

"Weeds are, in this sense, paradoxical. Although they follow and are dependent on human activities, their cussedness and refusal to play by our rules makes them subversive—and the very essence of wildness."

So true! Every aspect of natural and human life you can find examples of in weeds, even politics. Read the article, it is excellent.