Weeds

From "Secrets of the Soil" by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird

"The word "weod", since become "weed", had a double meaning in English as it was spoken in the Kingdom to about 1100. Its perjorative overtone, when it refered to plants tending to overgrow or choke out more desirable ones cultivated for food, was applied to their not entirely being worthless but to their being without value when growing in certain locations. Weed could also mean herb derived from the Latin "herba"-or any plant that does not develop persistent woody tissue but like the grasses dies back at the end of each growing season. To add to the confusion, the term "herb" also applied more restrictedly to a class of plants having savory, aromatic or medicinal value.
This old Anglo-Saxon dichotomy suggests that weeds, like people, can be foes or friends depending on how or in what circumstances they are viewed. What may appear unsightly, troublesome, or injurious in one context can, in another, be comely, effectual, convenient and benign..."

"...When the conquistadors disembarked, they found native Indians cultivating and caring for all manner of wild plants, using them for both food and medicine, not only for their own bodies, but to nourish and revive the soil, interplanting them with domesticated crops to increase their harvests. The vegetally-unsophisticated priests, seeing beans, corn, squashes and pumpkins flourishing side by side with what appeared to them to be totally useless companians, dubbed the non-productive offenders "malezas"-a word vaguely implying a sense of moral depravity. Going by the established standards of Iberian agriculture, they preached that the "bad" weeds should be rooted out and burned, like heretics, to leave the fields as bare as the apses of their grim cathedrals..."

"...By foraging far down into the subsoil like prairie grasses, weeds, with deep-diving roots, bring to the surface elements beyond the reach of most cultivated crops.
They also bring up moisture, raising it by capillary action along the miles-long surface of their root systems, breaking up hardpan in mistreated soils that can range from an inch or two to several feet deep between the surface of the ground and it's lower strata. It is the weeds' unique ability, developed over millennia-long struggles for existence to seek food and water under adverse, mostly man-made conditions, to 'eat' their way through concrete-like compaction by virtue of special dissolving substances exuded from their probing roots..."

"...Unrelated root systems do better when growing together than when that of a single plant is grown alone. First to go down are the anchorage roots,to support the plant so that it can stand high to reach the powerhouse of sunlight with its endless supply of energy for photosynthesizing food in its leaf laboratories. Anchorage roots have to be rigid, yet flexible enough to withstand severe strain. Next comes the great mass of roots known as the food hunters, ranging in size as they plow through the soil from many inches in diameter to slender threads..."

"...Hence the usefullness of weeds. Live weeds break up the soil with their own roots. Dying, they bequeath to the soil the fiber of their bodies, rendering the hard clay spongy, the loose sands firm. And all weeds, from sunflowers to carpetweeds-help make the world's best fertilizer, either as compost or when turned back into the land, adding, in biodynamics, cosmic and telluric forces to the soil."

I spent a couple of hours today removing puncture vine, also known as goats-head, from our asparagus patch. Puncture vine's seed heads are hard little thorny things that stick to the bottoms of your shoes. Invariably they find their way into the house. Invariably our bare feet find them, once again. Nasty little buggers!

From Petersons "Western Medicinal Plants and Herbs"-

Puncture Vine, Goats head, Little Caltrop-'Tribulus terrestris'
"The spiny fruits of 'Tribulus' have been prescribed by East Indian and Chinese herbalists for centuries to treat ailments of the genitourinary tract. In India the fruits are made into tea capsules, tablets, and liquid extracts for treating painful urination, incontinence, kidney stones, Bright's disease, impotence in men, nocturnal emissions, and gonorrhea. A leaf tea is used to calm the stomach and dissolve kidney stones; root tea to improve the appetite." And on and on...