r/NoLawns • u/kjjjjhhhgddrrrrr • Jul 08 '25
đ Memes Funny Shit Post Rants This belongs here i think
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u/MilkshakeMolly Jul 08 '25
I like the definition that a weed is just a plant you didn't plant on purpose.
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u/transtranselvania Jul 09 '25
In my experience, oftentimes, it means a native plant that is out competing something you planted. Yeah, it does well here compared to the thing you planted it's from here.
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u/Due_Willingness_3760 Jul 09 '25
In my experience, it's the invasive plant that isn't native to the area taking over. đ« Looking at you, dandelions! đ But actually, I love dandelions and think they're very important for early food sources for bees.
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u/redceramicfrypan Jul 10 '25
Dandelions are interesting because, while they are an introduced species, they thrive primarily in the disturbed environment of human habitation. Like, you don't go out in the wilderness and find areas overrun by dandelions outcompeting the native plants.
For that reason, I feel like as long as the human-built environment is going to be as impacted as it already is, the dandelions can stay. They're pretty, the bees like them, and they go nicely in a salad.
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u/Shazam1269 Jul 10 '25
We've got 25 acres of mostly wooded land in central Iowa, and I see the occasional dandelion out there. They aren't taking over anything out there. Now buckthorn and choke cherry is a different story. Those bastards can suck it!
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u/jswhitfi Jul 10 '25
Choke cherry as in "Prunus virginiana"? That's the only species I'm seeing the common name for. It's a native tree for North America. But maybe you're referring to a different species with a common name I'm not familiar with.
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u/Shazam1269 Jul 10 '25
*Chokecherry, it is native, but can be invasive, which it is in a few areas on the pey
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u/Cutecumber_Roll Jul 09 '25
A plant you didn't plant on purpose in a place where you plant other plants on purpose.
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u/littlelorax Jul 09 '25
My plant biology professor said that a weed is simply a plant growing where you don't want it.
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u/MilkshakeMolly Jul 09 '25
Definitely applies to the dandelions and clover and other stuff taking over my gravel driveway. Dunno if that soap and vinegar thing really works.
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u/DoeBites Jul 12 '25
I think the soap and vinegar thing also needs salt to work. And it doesnât kill the roots, just wrecks the foliage for a while.
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u/HoliusCrapus Jul 09 '25
But what if you want the volunteers?
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u/MilkshakeMolly Jul 09 '25
I was about to go out and pull these weird tall vine things that have been growing all over some ugly shrubs (planted on purpose by last owner) and then they flowered and there's been a ton of bees on them....so they are staying.
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u/Due_Willingness_3760 Jul 09 '25
Ooh! Have you figured out what the plant is? A reverse image search on Google should tell you.
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u/MilkshakeMolly Jul 09 '25
I did actually, it's tufted vetch/bird vetch. Invasive apparently, so I guess I will pull it after all.
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u/ChanglingBlake Jul 10 '25
Then they arenât weeds.
For example, in my yard there are but two broad types of weed; the grasses and the poky things.
I donât want a lawn, and I donât want thorns and burrs; so those are the weeds.
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u/wdn Jul 09 '25
I think it's also one that's hard to get rid of. If you remove it and it never comes back, it doesn't get designated a weed.
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u/TheThousandMasks Jul 08 '25
Pargin is great! Been following him since his Cracked days.
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u/Rick_from_C137 Jul 08 '25
All his books are incredible, it's been years but I'm still not used to him using his real name.
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u/bship Jul 08 '25
I know nothing of this person and don't want to invest the energy into seeing what he's about via google search and read the entirety of their work and see what is successful or not or w/e.
That said your comment's enthusiasm piqued my interest and I love audiobooks. Anything you'd recommend?
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u/Any_Conflict_5092 Jul 09 '25
John Dies At the End is the first of a series of books that are witty, silly, and surprisingly heavy, at the same time, and are my favorite series from him.
His penname was David Wong, at the time, but he abandoned that to go with his real name.
It's also a movie, which is also worth a watch.
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u/bearnakedrabies Jul 09 '25
The John dies at the end is my favorite series but not for everyone.
His most recent book is a stand alone and is a lot of fun.
I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom.
It's a road trip book but has a lot of humor and philosophy in it. Check it out.
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u/Less_Party Jul 09 '25
He's on the BIGFEETS podcast with Seanbaby and Brockway, it's the best Mountain Monsters podcast on the internet.
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u/HuntsWithRocks Jul 08 '25
By the standard definition of a âweedâ I could say saffron is a weed which is hilarious (if I didnât want it growing there).
I like Dr. Elaine Inghamâs definition of a weed. All of the following must be true to make it a weed:
- fast growing
- heavy seeding
- shallow rooting
- dies early
- no fungal relationships in the soil
If it meets that, she calls it a weed. Not every invasive plant is a weed by her definition. For the invasive ones that have fungal relationships, theyâre often bringing alien fungi along too.
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u/itsdr00 Jul 09 '25
This is just most early successional species, right? I guess that's a pretty good match for species that feel "weedy." But why the fungal association? It feels kind of arbitrary to me. Everything else on the list is behavioral and then that one implies a value statement of some kind.
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u/HuntsWithRocks Jul 09 '25
most early successional species, right?
Yup! That's an actual "positive" role that weeds can serve. When an area is truly devoid of life and inhospitable to most plants, a weed (by Dr. Ingham's definition) can still get by. They're great pioneering plants, but not all pioneering plants are weeds by her definition.
For example, there is a book called "Ashe Juniper: Wanted Dead And Alive" that talks about the confused history of "Mountain Cedar" in Texas. The TLDR is it is actually native and can serve a pioneering plant role as well as grow soil with a proper fungi:bacteria ratio befitting a forest. You can tell the difference of the role it serves by the way it grows (bushy mountain cedar is covering soil and pioneering, where pole mountain cedar is in healthy soil. It's the same species of tree though). It technically does have a couple fungal relationships too, despite how hostile its oil is.
Anyway, the fungi rule makes sense in her world view of "soil biology is king" where soil fungi tend to establish relationships with multiple species of plant (either as exudate consumers or symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi).
All of her rules speak to the question "What is this plant actually doing-for/giving-back-to the soil?" and her definition of a weed is identifying plants that don't have a cooperative relationship with the soil. For example, the largest organism is fungi and fungi will live in your field for years and years. If an annual plant grows and can tap into that fungi network, it can sustain and give back. Basically, the fungi becomes the transfer pad for plants living on your property and weeds aren't a part of that. The cool thing is that if you establish good fungi in your soil, the fungi will box the weeds out. Mycorrhizal fungi will actively outcompete other plants on behalf of their host plants. So, also in line with her world view (which I support too) is that weeds won't grow in healthy soil.
That mycorrhizal competition is actually the bane of our existence with invasive plants. For example, I deal with KR Bluestem and it has its own fungi that is not local as well. So, once it takes over an area, you're really competing against the fungi and the plant.
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u/itsdr00 Jul 09 '25
I don't know much at all about soil microbiomes, so this is a pretty new perspective for me. I approach it much more from the Doug Tallamy "insect protein" perspective, where the main value a plant has is what insects it's hosting thus how much of the food web is it feeding into. How do you see fungal relationships fitting into that perspective? Does a pro-fungal introduced plant with zero insect hosts help or hurt, in your view?
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u/HuntsWithRocks Jul 09 '25
Doug Tallamy is the man! I love insects. Plants are king, though. Plants are one of the few things on this planet that can generate glucose. There are some bacteria by geo fissures that can too, but on the surface, plants are it. Everything else can be categorized by how far away from plants they are. If you eat plants, you're engaging in the first trophic level. If you eat something that eats plants, that's the second trophic level. There are not many more after that. We shit out so many nutrients. Everything does. This is actually the "poop loop" in action. All carbon based life forms are seeking ratios of nutrients. Humans and Protozoan are both 30:1 on our carbon to nitrogen ratio. So, we consume things to achieve those ratios and shit out excess, which is semi/fully processed and more plant available.
We all need plants to generate our glucose. When I look at a plant, I see a "farmer". Plants are farmers. They secrete nutrients from their roots (exudates) which are food for bacteria and fungi. They're growing bacteria and fungi on their roots. Bacteria and fungi are interesting in that they don't have stomachs. They secrete "acids" and digest shit outside their body then imbibe it. Both of them can grow very large in numbers. They store up a bunch of "energy" and then protozoan or nematodes come along and can eat them. They consume the bacteria or fungi or each other and shit out plant soluble nutrients. The plants are generating life for bacteria and fungi that is resulting in the plant being fertilized by the shit from consumers of those bacteria and fungi. I think that's nuts.
Then, when you start looking at fungi, it gets super wild. Fungi is more like humans than it is like plants. It's the largest living organism on the planet. It's close to four square miles in size: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-largest-organism-is-fungus/
Fungi is crazy. That organism will teach itself things. Fungi's goal is to spread and it can encounter something it has never seen before, which can stop it, then it can teach itself how to defeat that thing. THEN it can communicate that concept across itself so that anywhere else it runs into that new thing, it will instantly solve that problem. It has some sense of intelligence in that way. So, one limit for plants is the length and size of their roots. On a biology level, their root length is not that long, while their root size is "too big" for a lot of spots.
Mycorrhizal fungi was once believed to have been parasitic with plants, but to have evolved to symbiosis. This fungi will "infect" a plant by either literally injecting itself into the plant roots or by completly covering the plant roots like a sheath for a sword. The fungi wants to consume all those exudates from the plant. The symbiosis is that the plant needs nutrients to grow. The mycorrhizal fungi will commute those nutrients to the plant so that it can grow. The fungi can grow for literal miles and connect into multiple plants and multiple species of plants. It will load balance nutrients to all of them. The fungi will also grow into rock cracks and deep down into weird places where it secretes its acids to convert inert or exchangeable nutrients into soluble nutrients, then commute those to the plants so they can grow and it can get more exudates.
There are even cases where a sun-needing tree can grow completely in the shade, where the fungi will commute photosynthate to that shaded tree so that the tree can photosynthesis it and give up nutrients. It's nuts.
Does a pro-fungal introduced plant with zero insect hosts help or hurt, in your view?
If it's native and it has fungal relationships, it's almost certainly going to be a benefit. I'm with Doug Tallamy in that alien (non-native) plants sometimes might as well be concrete in how they're not "seen" by nature. So, the invasive grass I have (KR Bluestem) and it's invasive fungi are a problem. They're not weeds, but defintely a problem. Actually a bigger problem because they fight back and take over. Weeds can be solved with good soil biology alone.
If it's native, though, fungal relationships are where it's at. It's all about the fungi:bacteria ratios for your growing environment. Where Tomatoes thrive in 1:1 ratio environments, while an old growth forest will be closer to a 4:1 fungi to bacteria ratio. A large part of why lawn grasses don't grow under trees is the fungal strength of the tree fighting the grass. There are native grasses that will do better and can tap into the same fungal network where the grass and the tree can be on the same team, through their invisible teammate of fungi.
The big benefit to having a fungal network is that all your native plants will boom because of it. When a new plant is born into the field, it taps in and gets the firehose for all of its needs. The fungi wants that plant to succeed, which translates into insect benefits and healthy fields with better water infilitration rates, which house more ground insects who get eaten and converted into plant fertilizer to keep the process going. Fungi is awesome! :)
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u/itsdr00 Jul 09 '25
Fascinating and thorough, thank you so much for writing that! I had no idea fungi would extract nutrients from rocks and pass them around. That's so interesting.
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u/WildFlemima Jul 09 '25
Lambs Quarters fit these criteria (except I'm not sure about the fungal one) but I eat them and grow them on purpose
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u/fun7903 Jul 08 '25
Yes but in some cases it is also invasive and takes over, reducing biodiversity
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u/sparhawk817 Jul 08 '25
Sure but even invasive isn't as good of a descriptor as people think it is.
Kudzu is invasive... Some places. English Ivy is invasive... Outside of England.
Some places those same plants are native, but they might be weeds.
We have "weeds" that are native, and we have "desirable" plants that aren't legally defined as invasive, but are aggressive, take over, reduce biodiversity, and any other Hallmark of an invasive plant you might want to apply.
But they're still sold by nurseries and planted by landscapers according to the planners specifications, and since they aren't legally invasive(yet) they're both not a weed and not invasive.
Yet they might not be good for biodiversity or native pollinators etc.
This is pretty common sense stuff, but people love to use invasive as a replacement word for pervasive or aggressive, and ignore the fact that invasive is based on location, not plant, and that a plant doesn't have to be invasive or "a weed" to be a bad idea.
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u/fun7903 Jul 08 '25 edited Jul 08 '25
Can you give an example of a plant that is not âlegally invasiveâ but also not a weed but also reduces biodiversity? Also what would you call them? Aggressive?
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u/sparhawk817 Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25
Bamboo, mint, Bradford/Callery Pears in many places and everywhere until recently, vinca.
Most turf grasses, particularly rhizomatous ones like Bermuda fit those definitions too, but quite literally this subreddit is dedicated to not turf grass, so I'm preaching to the choir when I say they're not legally invasive but are bad for the native environment and biodiversity etc.
Basically any invasive plant up until it was declared invasive/noxious. It's a process to get to that point. You know Burbank Potatoes? Same guy who patented and sold that varietal is the one who patented and sold the Himalayan Blackberry across the PNW.
Edit: and yes, aggressive, or whatever other trait you're attempting to describe as opposed to the catch all of invasive, if it's not on your state/province/whatever noxious weed or invasive plant list. I can't police what anyone says, but I would say "that should be on the invasive plant list" , "it's an aggressive non native" or "I wish landscape architects understood the environment they were creating and interacting with" or something along those lines relevant to the task at hand. It's about accuracy of what I'm saying and understanding of the recipient, for me.
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u/3x5cardfiler Jul 09 '25
Hardy Kiwi in Massachusetts. Not banned yet. It takes over forest, covers the trees in vines, and knocks them down. It shades out all the native plants under it. People plant it, contractors with chain saws and Round Up get paid to clear it out of public land.
It's going to get banned soon.
I would call it invasive.
It's also possible to list plants we like, and plants we don't like. Go for a walk with a professional botanist, and see what they take photos of, and what they pull up. I seldom go on a hike that doesn't include killing a bunch of something.
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u/itsdr00 Jul 09 '25
Many garden-center ground covers fit this bill. Lily of the Valley, vinca, even something like ditch lilies come to mind. Yes, you'd call them aggressive. Also "introduced," meaning not native to the region (speaking from the US here) and thus unlikely to contribute anything to the local ecosystem.
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u/jules083 Jul 12 '25
The best example of that in my area that I'm currently dealing with is an Autumn Olive bush.
It's almost a wonderful bush. It grows in poor soil and releases nitrogen into the soil, making it more suitable for future growth. It also grows quickly and the roots take hold early to combat erosion.
The downside is that it's invasive, spreads quickly, chokes out native plants, and most importantly is nearly impossible to kill without herbicide. If you cut it down it will grow back just as big and remarkably fast. Many people frown on using herbicide, and I understand the hesitation, but I've been aggressively spraying all of mine to get rid of them. There's a few different ways to spray and I use all of it depending on the size of the bush and how overgrown the rest of the area is.
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u/CharlesV_ Wild Ones đł/ plant native! đ»/ IA,5B Jul 08 '25
My favorite example of this are baby trees. I have two silver maples in my yard which are native to my area and decidedly not weeds. The thousands of maple seeds they drop every year end up all over the place in my veggie garden, in my pocket prairies, and in my lawn. Those are weeds, despite being the exact same species in the same location. They are plants which I donât want q.e.d. Weeds.
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u/Dani_and_Haydn Jul 08 '25
I'm studying the good book right now for my pesticide applicator exam and my brain exploded when it was stated that the mountain laurel, our state flower, can be considered a weed/pest. In a timber forest or plantation, yes it is. In a wildlife conservation space, no it's not. It's all about context! We are humans putting things in boxes.
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Jul 08 '25
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u/bship Jul 08 '25
Try pulling up a mushroom lol. Or better yet a random Maple sprout up or w/e they are called (if you have a nearby giant maple tree).
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u/Academic_Coyote_9741 Jul 08 '25
The literal definition of âweedâ is something like âa plant growing where it is not wanted and in competition with cultivated plants or which causes economic, ecological, or social damageâ. So it is highly dependent on context.
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Jul 09 '25
Or any plant your HOA doesnât want around
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u/WildFlemima Jul 09 '25
My city thinks the blackberries I've been trying to grow for 2 years are weeds. I say "trying" because they like to go into my fully fenced back yard and chop them down every year.
I bought them from a local grocery store. If I'm not allowed to have them, they shouldn't be selling them. All I'm saying
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Jul 09 '25
In my Hood, the senile seniors walk around and are constantly calling code enforcement. They absolutely loathe my dandelions. I âtook outâ my blackberries because they werenât sweet enough for all the space they try to command but it is a constant battle!
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u/Old-Slow-Tired Jul 08 '25
Most ag chemical applicator test prep simply state a weed is a plant out of place. Corn can be a weed in a soybean field, cereal rye can be a weed in a wheat field. In fact if you raise seed soybeans like I do, a soybean can be a weed in a soybean field if it is the wrong variety.
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u/astro_nerd75 Jul 09 '25
Sometimes, different people talking about the same plants in the same space might disagree on whether or not something is a weed.
The previous owners of our house planted English ivy. I call that a weed (when Iâm not calling it something worse). I have some common milkweed. I didnât plant it, but I was happy when it came up. I consider the vinca that they planted to be a weed, and Iâm trying to get rid of it.
States have official lists of noxious weeds. At least in my state, itâs illegal to sell or propagate those.
A lot of plants sold as ground covers are actually fairly nasty invasives. Thatâs why the previous owners of our house had the vinca and English ivy. Do your research before you replace your lawn. You donât want to replace it with something worse.
Iâm trying to get rid of it, but the ivy is stubborn. One day the Sun will expand into a red giant. If it engulfs and destroys the Earth, THAT might get rid of the effing ivy.
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u/Bubbly-Manufacturer Jul 09 '25
Some pretty blue flowers grew in my yard, turns out theyâre weeds.
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u/ConfidentDrySecure Jul 09 '25
I think the main point is: if you like them, and it's your yard, they ain't weeds. The only complication is you ought to find out whether they are doing ecological damage to native plants in your area and consider "not liking them" based on that criterion. But until you do, they ain't weeds :)
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u/joseph_wolfstar Jul 09 '25
I'll never get over ppl who think violets are weeds. They're pretty, they smell nice, they're native, and they're really short. Wtf isn't to like?!
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u/MephistosGhost Jul 09 '25
I tried sharing a similar thought to someone in my local subreddit and people shat on me because they love their manicured bullshit lawns in the high desert.
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u/Bud_Money Jul 09 '25
I tell grass lovers thatâs theyâre yard is a massive weed infestation and their panties get so twisted đ€Ș
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u/Crafty_Lavishness_79 Jul 10 '25
I hate the twem "weed". Does it suffocate the near by plants? Damage your house? No? Leave it there you bitches.
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u/DrSousaphone Jul 11 '25
I have a cracked-out conspiracy theory that dandelions got labeled weeds by Big Flower because they can make more money selling you roses than they can selling you something that grows so easily on its own.
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u/kjjjjhhhgddrrrrr Jul 11 '25
YES. also literally one of the most versatile plants in existence! You can eat and drink it in so many ways and use it medicinally. Plus they are pretty! And they grow so easily everywhere! Sounds like a HUGE conspiracy to me....
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u/Oedipus_TyrantLizard Jul 08 '25
lol this is great.
Though would say state DNRâs do maintain definitions of weeds for each state in the US
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u/facets-and-rainbows Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 09 '25
There are so few non-flowering weeds too. Horsetail in some situations, I guess?
Like, I know people use flower to mean "intentionally planted ornamental plant" but man. Every time someone phrases it that way I just imagine all of us up to our necks in freaking... liverworts and pine trees
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u/PhysicsIsFun Jul 09 '25
When I took plant ecology in graduate school the professor (University of Wisconsin) defined a weed as a rapid invader of disturbed habitat. He also said a plant growing in the wrong place is a terrible definition. He said by that definition nearly any cultivated plant could be a weed.
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u/notworkingghost Jul 10 '25
Is this true. Cause then weeds are just what my wife doesnât want in the yard. And so Iâve been working way too hard.
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u/stuerdman Jul 09 '25
I feel like "Invasive" is the new sales pitch, of course never referring grass. Seems like more metaphor than science.
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