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“A weed is a flower growing in the wrong place.”
-George Washington Carver.
Some ideas, crisply captured in a handful of words, resolutely refuse to die. In fact, they keep popping back up, no matter what weapons are brought to bear against them. Like weeds.
George Washington Carver’s notion that weeds are simply flowers where we as gardeners don’t want them to be has been restated independently by a whole host of other writers since Carver’s death.
The idea of weeds as just flowers growing in the wrong place has become so simply and fundamentally entrenched in the way they’re seen that even Merriam-Webster now defines a weed as “1a(1): a plant that is not valued where it is growing and is usually of vigorous growth,” though it does have the gardening grace to add a sub-definition of “especially: one that tends to overgrow or choke out more desirable plants.”….. continued
