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What Is a Weed? [1943]
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
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What Is a Weed? [1943] A typescript dated August 2,1943, this is as fine an example of Leopold's wry, ironic humor in service of a deeply serious concern as anything he wrote. It contains a blank space of several lines that Leopold apparently intended to fill in, but never did. This short, playful essay advances the analogy, implied in others, between wildlife and wildflower conservation. It also underscores the disjunction between industrial and ecological motifs in the philosophy of agriculture. To live in harmony with plants is, or should be, the ideal ofgood agriculture. To call every plant a weed which cannot be fed to livestock or people is, I fear, the actual practice of agricultural colleges. I am led to this baleful conclusion by a recent perusal of The Weed Flora of Iowa, one of the authoritative works on the identification and control of weed pests.1 "Weeds do an enormous damage to the crops of Iowa" is the opening sentence of the book. Granted. "The need of a volume dealing with weeds ... has long been felt by the public schools." I hope this is true. But among the weeds with which the public schools feel need of dealing are the following: Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) "succumbs readily to cultivation." A model weed! Partridge pea (Cassia Chamaecrista) "grows on clay banks and sandy fields," where it may be "readily destroyed by cutting." The inference is that even clay banks must be kept clean of useless blooms. Nothing is said of the outstanding value of this plant as a wildlife food, or of its nitrogen-fixing function. Flowering spurge (Euphorbia corollata) is "common in gravelly soils" 1. The Weed Flora o/Iowa, Bulletin no. 4 (Iowa Geological Survey, 1926),715 pp. 306 What Is a Weed? 307 and "difficult to exterminate. To eradicate this plant the ground should be given a shallow plowing and the root-stocks exposed to the sun." Nothing is said of the wisdom of plowing gravelly soils at all, or of the fact that this spurge belonged to the prairie flora, and is one of the few common relics of Iowa's prairie years. Presumably the public schools are not interested in this. Prairie goldenrod (Solidago regida), which "though often a very troublesome weed in pastures, is easily killed by cultivation." The locality troubled by this uncommon and lovely goldenrod is indeed exceptional. The University of Wisconsin Arboretum, in order to provide its botany classes with a few specimens to look at, had to propagate this relic Of the prairie flora in a nursery. On my own farm it was extinct, so I handplanted two specimens, and take pride in the fact that they have reproduced half a dozen new clumps. Horsemint (Monarda mol/is). "This weed is easily exterminated by cultivation," and "should not be allowed to produce seeds." During an Iowa July, human courage, likewise, might easily be exterminated but for the heartening color-masses and fragrance ofthis common (and as far as I know) harmless survivor of the prairie days. Ironweed (Veronia Baldwini) is "frequently a troublesome weed, but it is usually not difficult to exterminate in cultivated fields." It would be difficult to exterminate from my mind the August landscape in which I took my first hunting trip, trailing after my father. The dried-up cowtracks in the black muck of an Iowa bottomland looked to me like small chasms, and the purple-topped ironweeds like tall trees. Presumably there are still school children who might have the same impressions, despite indoctrination by agricultural authority. Peppermint (Mentha piperita). "This plant is frequently found along brooks. The effectual means of killing it is to clear the ground of the root-stocks by digging." One is moved to ask whether, in Iowa, nothing useless has the right to grow along brooks. Indeed why not abolish the brook, which wastes many acres of otherwise useful farmland. Water pepper (Polygonum hydropiper) "not very troublesome ... except in low places. Fields that are badly infested should be plowed and drained." [44.193.80.126] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 02:39 GMT) 308 What Is a Weed? No one can deny that this is a weed, albeit a pretty one. But even after drainage, would not some annual, and perhaps a more troublesome one, follow every plowing? Has Iowa repealed the plant succession? It is also of interest to note that the Iowa wildlife research unit finds Polygonum hydropiper to be [Several lines of blank...