Facts don’t disappear in life, but in the end attitude is their equal. Water hyacinths can demonstrate that.

If you know much about the state of Florida it was over run not long ago by water hyacinths. The state botanists still call it the worse weed on earth. They say this for two reasons:  It impacts tourism and also the water ecology of the state. It’s a billion-dollar boondoggle. But then there is attitude and perception.  While flustered Florida sputtered away calling it a weed Florida ignored the fact that in other parts of the world the water hyacinths is used for cattle fodder (a point you would think would not have been missed by the nation’s third largest producer of cattle.)

With preparation people can eat water hyacinth, it makes a good fertilizer, has very useable fiber, can be used to make bio-fuel, and importantly it has the ability in water or on land to absorb pollutants. It’s a sponge that loves to grow and can double its population in just two weeks. Do you have a “love canal” that needs cleaning up, or is the price of gasoline getting too high? To the point: Is water hyacinth a weed or a bio-tool that can be used?  Florida had to address the threat it posed. Protecting an economy is important because that in turn protects people. But maybe it is time for some attitude adjustment.

Water hyacinth can be a “weed” with all the negative connotations that engenders or a valuable plant. The view determines ideas and how tax dollars are spent. Now billions are spent to either spray the plant with favored pollutants (called herbicides) or mechanically crush the plant and let it rot. Why not utilize the plant and at the same time reduce its population? The newsman Harry Reasoner once said he hated labels because once you labeled someone or something you stopped thinking about it. Calling a plant a weed does exactly that. You can spend billions killing something and throwing it away, or harvesting something that can help people and show a return. It’s a matter of attitude.

Grass and Trees are at war

Point of view, thinking differently…  Consider:

What if plants are more goal-orientated than we think them to be? After all, we put ourselves on the top of the list, whatever that list is, and that placement, deserved or not, skews our view and thinking. What if trees and grass are in a war to dominate the earth? The trees for most of history were winning. But now grass has human help.

For some grasses, the battle plan is to accept some losses (literally off the top) for domination. If you don’t mow a lawn, the trees win. Mow a lawn, grass dominates. Thus grass, so to speak, is using humans to fight trees. That’s rather curious because far more trees are beneficial in some way than grasses, and much more edible. Each lawn of decapitated grass is local battle between grass and trees, and the non-edible grass is winning while consuming a lot of green to stay green.

In one of the articles here, I mention that in Tasmania the wild blackberry is considered an extreme nuisance. Ponder that for a moment:  A self-tending annual edible plant with delicious food and medicinal uses is a state-declared nuisance. Isn’t that more a problem of utility than definition? Most of the “noxious” weeds listed by most agricultural authorities are in fact edible. Let’s call them Forgotten Food. The problem is we don’t eat the weeds any more. We get our food pre-managed instead of really gathering it ourselves, or growing it.

Setting aside for a moment my name, it’s not unreasonable to ask why is there so much lawn? Don’t misunderstand me, lawns can be nice. I’ve had some mighty good moments on lawns. Parks, golf courses, monuments and cemeteries can benefit from lawns. But do you realize lawn grass is the second larges crop in America only after corn, another grass.  I am not sure humans should be helping lawn grass dominate the flora of the world nor should we be herbiciding edible weeds. Food is food. Only an obese nation values decapitated grass. There are no “noxious” edible weeds in Ethiopia. When I was last a visiting relatives in Greece, I saw perhaps a hundred square feet of lawn, total. Clearly nations can get by without lawns.

Front Yard Salad

What lawn I have is a greens keeper’s nightmare. I intentionally grow most of the weeds virtually hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on every year trying to keep out of lawns: Chickweed, pellitory, spiderwort, wild lettuce, sow thistle, dayflowers, dandelions, pennyworts, spanish needles, mustard, sorrel, hawksbeard and betony.  Into salads and cooked greens they go, nutritious and no approve chemicals that might be recalled next week because they might make me glow in the dark a decade from now. For most of the year my little lawn, which is about 30 by 40 with over a dozen trees, provides me a with a steady supply of organic greens (and some roots.) I don’t have to do much for the bounty, except harvest and fend off local authorities.

Original suburban gardeners, "Good Neighbors"

One year they said my weeds were over 18-inches high, thus violating the residential code ordinance.  I agree you can’t have a “Good Neighbors” farm in a cul-du-sac neighborhood. But this was tended, not over grown, not wild nor abandoned…. a natural garden, food for my table, not “weeds.” I won my case by pointing out the ordinance said weeds that were “unintentionally” over 18 inches tall were in violation. I countered my weeds, which I could identify by their Latin names and cook for any inspector who wanted to dine with me, were intentionally over 18-inches high thus not in violation.  The truth is only two or three of them can even reach 18-inches and I won on a technicality rather than convincing them of the wisdom of being green.

There are, I think, three issues: First, a lot of jobs are involved with the maintenance of lawns and the death of edible weeds. What a resource that would be if put towards fostering Forgotten Foods rather than killing them. Next, a century ago lawns were an affectation, now they are standard. Some lawns in some places are fine, the national mall comes to mind and the veteran cemetery that will hold me one day. But it is time stop making them a standard residential feature. They need to be uncommon again, and thus I think, then more appreciated for what they are.

And of course there are ordinances, which need to be eased a bit. Why, after all, is a seven-foot deadly oleander acceptable on a lawn but not an edible 20-inch Tradescantia? It is said politics make odd bedfellows. It seems to me the left and the right have a meeting point in the greenery arena. I put no pesticides or herbicides my lawn. That is certainly good in the long run for me, my neighbors and the aquifer. I am responsible for my lawn’s maintenance. I don’t hire illegals to decapitate it using Arab oil in a Japanese lawnmower brokered by someone in India imported on a Chinese ship. We need to start rethinking the idea of a lawn as lawn when it should be a place for trees and edibles. And while we do need to be cognitive of residential values we need start changing ordinances that say yes to expensive grass and toxic ornamentals but no to food-producing landscapes and Forgotten Food.  Edible landscaping can be just as attractive as poisonous landscaping. It costs less, is far safer, and provides a nutritious return. Lawns are winning in their war against trees. I think we need to change sides.

Atop Bradbury Mountain State Park, Pownal Maine

West of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, I stopped today and collected some thistle and took a few pictures. More than 50 years ago I marveled at the same plant growing across the road from my home in Pownal, Maine.

Pownal Town Hall, now with water and electricity

Back then the town had five one-room school houses with no running water. That meant an outhouse, drinking water collected from an oak-barrel spring, and an old stove in the middle of the room. It was an education system that had worked well for about a century, open classroom ahead of its time. Four of the schools had two grades each. One, in West Pownal, had all eight grades in one room. There was usually less than a couple of dozen kids in each school.

Every spring, it seems, we’d take the closed tops of the thistle to school — no easy feat — and hang them upside down in the windows, watching them turn over time into big puffs of cotton. It was something the teacher, Mrs. Tryon, had us do. Mentioning windows… Above is Pownal’s town hall, the same building when I was there 50 years ago except then it had a two-story outhouse attached to the back. (Years later I would wonder about the engineering involved in a two-story outhouse as they were over/under each other.) Downstairs it had one big room for the annual townhall meeting. Upstairs I attened Boy Scouts for a while. Not more than 100 feet to the our right was one of the schools just outside the picture. It was for seventh and eight grade kids, and once an overflow of four sixth graders, of which I was one along with Diane York, Peter Goss, and Bruce Spencer. The school was unusual in that it had several windows, but only on the north side of the school.

Things were certainly different then. On May Day we’d hang a basket of candy on the teacher and disappear into the woods for the entire afternoon, sometimes getting as far as the top of Bradbury Mountain, the rocky knob of the local state park more than a mile away. Hanging a May basket and scattering had been happening on May Days for decades and no one thought a thing about it. Now days, two dozen kids running into the woods at noon to disappear for three or four hours would be cause for dragnets and law suits. Never was a child lost or hurt.  It really makes you believe that less is indeed more.

And let me tell you about Mrs. Arlene Frances Tryon, the teacher: A hundred pounds wet and in her 60’s was more than able to put a teenage boy in his place. Of course, back then the teacher had rights and was right and when you got home dad took you down another notch for being a pain in the class to the teacher.  There was a lot to be said for that one-room school… and yes, I did get to the top of Bradbury Mountain on May day, three years in a row.

As for the thistles, they would puff out and hang in the sunless windows for a few weeks until they began to fall apart, another sign school would soon be over for the summer.

Rumex hastatulus

It was one of those moments. I was biking along a rails to trails, stopping and taking pictures of this and that plant for past and future blogs. Better pictures are always good. I was taking a picture of a pin cherry blossom when a woman walking on the trail asked me what it was because she said she had never seen it blossoming. I told her then pointed out a few more plants and even got her to sample some Rumex hastatulus.  I also showed her some Teloxys ambrosiodes, which we only smelled, having no tacos available. I handed her a “Green Deane, eattheweeds.com” card and she started walking. About a hundred feet away, she turned around and yelled “Deane!” I looked up and she said “you made my day.”  …and she made mine.