Beautiful Weeds

I was clearing away the really tall grass that shot up from my garden while I was away, and I found a rather nice-looking weed. It’s a vine, but not a choking vine; it has nice pale purple flowers and a very nice balance of leaves to flowers (unlike a lot of weeds, which may have the occasional nice flower but are mainly huge leafy monsters). It was really a nice-looking weed, so I just left it. I mean, roses are weeds, right? Why aren’t weeds perfectly acceptable? (says the person who was just spraying Roundup on the driveway…)

And then it struck me exactly how mean we humans are. We choose flowers, many times based purely on appearance. We exterminate the native plants and replace them with beds of luxuriant soil, into which we place plants that need to be watered, plants that wouldn’t naturally survive. And when the natives try to reestablish themselves? They’re re-exterminated. It’s like the plant equivalent of colonialism, except the plants the humans support will always win. There isn’t going to be a revolution.
But I still love my sunflowers, I love seeing their bright yellow faces turned towards the furiously strong sunlight despite the fact that those very faces have to be bombarded with chemicals a couple times a week to prevent them from becoming deer food. I guess if the native plants want to keep living, well, they had better develop weaponry to combat the gardened (machine guns, perhaps?) or become prettier.
– Rover