A Word for Weeds

 

In French, there are at least two ways to say “weed,” and they reflect two different attitudes.

The first way reflects the same feeling that we usually have in English when we say weed: mauvaise herbe, bad herb. This is not only a value judgment but also shuts the door to asking any further questions about the plant.

This phrase reinforces our prejudices that weeds are noxious. There are, of course, more exceptions than you can shake a stick at. One example is the pineapple weed Matricaria.

 

I have admired this weed since junior high school. It grows in dry, compacted soil (such as hiking paths). It does not bother to grow tall. You can hardly avoid stepping on it. And if you do, what is the plant’s response? To release a pleasing pineapple-like odor!

The second way to say weed is adventice. This suggests a feeling that weeds take advantage of any opportunities that are available. In English, we say that roots are “adventitious” when they grow out of stems to take advantage of opportunities, such as a vine crawling up a wall or a tree trunk. From this viewpoint, weeds are very creative and waste no time in filling any resource space that may be available. However inconvenient weeds may be, we have to admire this aspect of their lives.

One way that weeds do this is that they adjust their growth and physiology to circumstances much better than other species do. I devoted a considerable part of my Ph.D. thesis (see here for a simplified version of it) to this idea. Weeds live under conditions where they never know what they will find: a lot of light, or mostly shade; a lot of water, or little; a lot of nutrients, or sterile soil; etc. This is why I prefer the French term adventice over the term mauvaise herbe.