One man’s weed is another man’s flora

 

Earlier in the spring we were taking stock of the old raised garden beds left fallow for some years. The chives were already coming back, and in. The strawberries’ leaves were green already in the strawberry terrace. Some onions had survived somehow. I pointed to one raised bed, and told my brother:

“That’s your asparagus hill.” I could tell because of the old, dried asparagus stocks still standing from last year.

“They’re coming up already,” he said.

“No. Those are just horsetail. That’s a damn weed. There’s no asparagus yet.”

The first finger of a horsetail breaking through the ground might be mistaken for a thin female asparagus. But horsetail are a problem. They grow from rhizomes (like asparagus) and can take over top and ground soil if left to themselves (unlike asparagus). “I pull horsetail; find the roots and pull as much as I can out. I turn over horse tail with the spade and rake the roots from the soil. I use chemicals on it when I can, and I don’t like to admit that.”

Recently my old neighborhood buddy asked me to help him learn plant identification. He has a place on Madeline Island, and he wants to be an amateur conservationist or naturalist. He wants to know which plants not to step on when he’s out walking in the wild. I thought that was fair; it sounds odd, but I think that way too.

So, when my buddy was up in Grand Marais last month, I took him out in the woods for half an hour, to show him what I know or don’t. And what I value, or don’t.

Here’s the wild sarsaparilla, lumberjack’s toilet paper, bunchberry, bracken fern and fiddleheads. Saskatoons by their various names and chokecherries and elderberries. The two maples and mountain ash, which the birds and bear and I love. Speckled alder, which I dislike (I’m a trout fisherman). Beaked hazelnut (thick but unproductive). Spruce (iconic) and firs (weedy). The difference between the poplar and white birch.

Yesterday and today when I was fishing a trout stream, I found myself making judgments too. Never step on marsh marigold. Or disturb the purple iris or red columbine. I like the ferns, but I did grab a handful with which to wrap my brook trout in to stash in my vest pocket. Three ferns harvested and an eight-inch brook trout.

In my own sphere of influence, I can be odd. My yard – or what was once a yard – I leave fallow, because I love the blue green, tall orchard grass, and buttercups and Timothy, and ditch daisies and wild rye and bluebells. But leaving things fallow I have to put up with the quack grass and dandelions (whose yellow flowers I can like but whose leaves and seeds I do not) that mix into the point of dominating. I guess I like cowslip but not lupines. I killed woods honeysuckle (although I love the smell) and keep bush honeysuckle for its red berries. They remind me of the honeysuckle bush outside my corner bedroom when I was a child. We played Army men in the sandlot below my window and the army men’s rations were tomatoes (red honeysuckle fruit) and corn (plantain florescence). The rations were plentiful but not sufficient, but our imaginations were good, and our needs were both little and very great.

One man’s weed is another man’s Flora, goddess of flowers. And one man’s purple coneflower is another man’s lambs’ quarter.