What could be more mundane or less appreciated than weeds, the ones that you see by the roadside, or popping up among your cultivated flowers? Some folks with lawns even poison the weeds, to take control over nature.

From nature’s point of view, which I will assume while I write this entry, there are no weeds; only a wide diversity of plants adapted to a certain habitat. They spread their seeds and runners, waiting for an opening in the soil. A garden or plowed field, or a burnt-over area, is like an open scar in the earth’s covering. If it is not planted by humans, or colonized by weeds, the soil would soon erode by wind and rainfall. The plants’ roots anchor the soil, while the foliage gives shelter to colonies of insects and small animals. Mammals graze on their foliage. Weeds are an important link in the web of life.

Weeds are also the ancestors of all our food crops. Beginning with wild grasses, seed pods, berries, etc., humans have selected, over thousands of years, the plants we cultivate today. Medicinal and culinary herbs also originated in the wild, and can be found there today, if their original habitat still exists.

Even so-called ‘weed trees’ have a function in the forest, where they spring up quickly after a fire or clearcut. They hold the soil while the slower growing species become re-established. Poplar, for example, is often called a weed tree because its wood has little commercial value to humans, yet it can fix nitrogen in the soil for the other species. The bark of young poplar trees is eaten by beavers. Poplar is part of the cycle of forest renewal.

I think it’s fine to pull weeds out of the garden, or cultivate a field. I also think it’s equally good to honor the wild plants in nature, even when we don’t think we benefit from their existence. Indirectly, we do benefit. We are all part of the one great interconnected web.