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dafla

What is your favorite weed?

dafla
22 years ago

I was reading the "favorite quotes" thread, and remembered this one:

"A weed is a plant out of place"

My favorite weed is the wild aster that come up by the hundreds on my back bank every year. Butterflies love them, and I have seen as many as 25 butterflies at one time flitting amongst them. If you can, imagine all those butterflies, along with the 20 or so ibises, herons, and other water birds that feed in the ditch the bank leads to. What a sight to see out of my kitchen window!

What is your favorite weed?

Comments (64)

  • Mar_cusBrutus
    22 years ago

    I LOVE Queen Ann's Lace, dandelions, clover and feverfew. I know it DOES sound almost like treason to like dandelions, but I love their color and that massed look in fields--they made Gettysburg look like a city of gold.

    I like to see the rabbits munching on the clover at dusk and twilight...the jelly I helped to make with Queen Ann's Lace and how feverfew has almost eliminated my migraines. Good stuff...great HERBS!!

    :)
    Mark

  • oldherb
    22 years ago

    A Weed is a plant who's merit it yet undiscovered.

    I love the felty Verbascum thapsus and most any weed I can eat. I began foraging a couple of years ago and found that I could easily fix a winter salad without even planting a single bit of lettuce. I also love perennial sweet pea and Fuller's Teasle, reminders of our Oregon Trail pioneers. Little Western Bittercress is a food plant for our parasitic wasps and a darn good salad herb so it has a place in my garden.

  • ramboe
    22 years ago

    Anyone else love dandolion because you could blow the seeds everywhere when you were a child?

  • cccatcrazy
    22 years ago

    Favorite weed? You mean I have to choose? Okay...goosefoot, because it's so delicious. No, wait, uh...purslane because It's tasty in salads. But then, there's amaranth...and burdock shoots...

    Darn Euell Gibbons for turning me on to these! My garden never looks neat anymore!

  • Gardengirl
    22 years ago

    Orangey jewel weed/touch-me-nots
    Tall and shaggy-headed Joe Pye
    Queen Anne's Lace
    Passion flower vine
    Trumpet vine
    Indian paintbrush
    Goldenrod
    Oxeye daisy
    I don't consider any bloom a weed, love them all.

  • kidhorn
    22 years ago

    White Yarrow. Sold at most garden centers, but is a weed around my house.

  • WeedGrower
    22 years ago

    Indica Sativa.

    Enough said.

  • Dswan
    22 years ago

    Goldenrod, because it is so attractive to pollinating insects. Bees and butterflies swarm to my goldenrod plants which most people consider weeds.

  • garden_of_mu
    22 years ago

    Geranium Robertinum, a 'weed' here, it gets everywhere, but I always let a few grow because they are so pretty. Bright red stems hold up lacy, deep green leaves, and they grow in the most pleasing geometric pattern. The little pink flowers are really pretty when they come out later in the summer. I even potted a few to bring to my new house in case there weren't any growing there. =)

    Mike

  • Meghane
    22 years ago

    Buttercups and dandelions, because I like yellow. Also mimosa trees. I dug one out of a ditch and actually planted it in my garden. Also like Queen Anne's lace.

  • Feylin
    22 years ago

    Dandelions has got to be my favorite weed.

    "Weeds" rearranged is nothing but "seed" with a little something extra. :) And all seeds have wonderful potential.

  • wolfgang
    22 years ago

    I love seeing wild verbena with its purple/blue flowers. It goes in the most inhospitable places here.

  • timurileng
    22 years ago

    Annual pincushion flower (Scabiosa) used to be my favorite weed, since it attracts bees and butterflies, but now it has totally taken over my entire garden. It is extremely invasive, so I have decided to wage all-out war against it. If you grow Scabiosa, you can't grow anything else.

    Bill T.

  • records
    22 years ago

    goldenrod
    ironweed(butterflies love it!!)
    milkweed
    queen annes lace
    wild chicory,

    A friend once told me a weed is a plant you don't like, if you like it it ain't a weed!!!

  • bulldinkie
    21 years ago

    those little purple violets.

  • Fluid_Floyd
    21 years ago

    uhm . . . well, you know...

  • brian_7_atlanta
    21 years ago

    I've been wanting to post to this thread but had no idea as to the identity of the weed I wanted to choose. It's one of the very few weeds I have ever cultivated (for the always tidy, burgundy tinted basal rosette of leaves and airy blue flowers), Well, today I was walking through Randy's nursery in Lawrenceville (always good for a pleasant surprise, Randy is) and stumbled upon Salvia lyrata "Purple Knockout". I immediately recognized it an improved form of my favorite weed. So now I know what my favorite weed was, but S. lyrata isn't a weed for me any more!

  • plantynut
    21 years ago

    Goldenrod. It showed up about 3 years ago and is really doing quite well. I have even moved it to spots where nothing else will grow and it thrives.

  • pondwelr
    21 years ago

    I adore a tiny creeper that appeared in some 'hauled-in dirt' to make low berms along the lot lines at my new house.
    After much searching, found out is called slender speedwell.
    Tiny roundish serrated leaves with brilliant blue flowers in May. Not at all invasive in my clay soil.

  • justjude
    21 years ago

    Interesting thread about what's a weed and what's a flower. If you can't tell whether something is a weed or flower, give it a gentle tug. If it comes out of the ground easily, it was a flower.

  • Fluid_Floyd
    21 years ago

    Too true. Too true!

  • spongebob
    21 years ago

    Queen Anne's Lace
    and
    wild phlox
    Aquilegia Canadensis
    and forget-me-nots look better as a weed-in-the-lawn than they do in a border.
    Catalpa tree!
    Wood Hyacinth
    violets
    my weeds look as good as my cultured residents.

  • Trees4Me
    21 years ago

    Annual bachelor buttons (centaurea cyanus) mixed with black-eyed susan (rudbeckia hirta) and blanketflower (gaillardia aristata)...beautiful combo, but they will overrun the beds.

    I actually babied an alfalfa AKA lucerne plant (medicago sativa) that showed up in my flower beds one day. That is, until someone informed me what those beautiful pink-purple blossoms were. By that time, it had given birth to babies by the dozen, of course...lol

  • mystdragyn
    21 years ago

    wild buckwheat. It climbs anything lol

  • Jepa
    21 years ago

    dandelion, which is so ordinary but such a good salad-stuff in spring - - and another is cap gooseberry, that somehow has gotten wild here in the north in my kitchen garden :D

  • gardenspider09
    21 years ago

    Thought I'd come over to this forum and see what someone else was up to. This is a great subject. I haven't met a weed I don't like, yet, even though I do have to judiciously eliminate some of them at times so my husband won't take the gardening duties away from me!

    Like Jepa, I just love dandelions. So much so that lots of years ago, in a side garden where nothing else would grow in a yard we had up north, I saved tons of dandelion seeds from my yard and planted them all in that side garden. We moved a few months later so I never got to see the dandelion garden in bloom, but I wonder what the next owners (very fussy people) thought of it!!!

  • cicadae
    21 years ago

    I love yellow flag.

  • Nancy5050
    21 years ago

    Ifeel sorry for weeds ,a weed is just a flower no one loves

  • rubyskies_oh
    21 years ago

    Does anyone know what this weed might be that is growing in my garden this year. It looks just like a lamb's ear. It is a low growing felty rosette. Maybe it's not a weed, but I don't know what it is since I didn't plant anything that looks like that.

  • pricem11
    21 years ago

    Rubyskies, I bet you have the common mullein (Verbascum thapsus). I like it too and tend to leave these 'happy accidents' wherever they decide to grow. BTW, next year, you'll got a tall fuzzy flower spike with tiny yellow flowers all along it.

  • mistybear11
    21 years ago

    We have a weed in Ontario call purpleloosetrife. It looks like it is in the Liatris family. The problem is as much as I love the colour of this thing. It is taking over the wetlands and way too invasive. So really I guess this is the weed I love TO HATE!. Anyway did you realize some of the weeds listed here we can hardly grow as annuals? And that I recently found out that there are many who would like to grow lilacs. Over here they come up all over and I guess you could actually call them weeds.

  • stimpy926
    21 years ago

    Hi all,
    around here there is a small wild yellow snapdragon that I remember from childhood. I dug some up along the road and put them in my garden! You can shear them all through the summer, and it continually reblooms. One person's trash,is another......
    I also like May apples, wild violets, and queen anne's lace.

  • jayco
    21 years ago

    When I was a kid the lady up the street had a nice lawn full of big, juicy dandelions and I thought she was the greatest because she let me pick as many as I wanted! I still love dandelions and many other beautiful weeds... goldenrod, queen anne's lace, daisies, cornflowers, etc.

  • Jonathan
    19 years ago

    Wild raspberries!

  • AaronCGI
    19 years ago

    It looks like little shamrocks and has pretty yellow flowers. The plants spread easily and can take being mown and stepped on, but they are easy to pull out if you don't want them. In my yard the leaves are very dark green and even burgundy colored, very pretty.

    I thought the purslane that grew in my garden a couple years ago was the coolest, and tasted way better than dandelions ever did in a salad. I can't consider the purslane a weed though, since I've only ever seen that one plant. But it grew huge with no water whatsoever, in a year when even the dandelions were wilting.

    Aaron

  • Eliza_ann_ca
    19 years ago

    Trilliums!They are our provincial flower and love to see a carpet of them in among the trees by the side of the roads in spring.I also love Queen Anne's Lace,and cornflowers.Not sure if corn flowers are a weed everywhere,but they grow wild everywhere around here.My favorite color blue.

    Eliza ann

  • nanthompson_comcast_net
    18 years ago

    All the ones mentioned so far. Does anyone know the name of a roadside "weed" with tiny pink flowers in a raceme an inch or less tall? The flowers look like little seed heads, the size of a pinhead and are relatively hard.
    There are about 3-5 flower stems to a stalk; plants-only 1 foot high; alternate,pointed leaves. It was still blooming
    here(Balt.,MD)in mid-Nov. On sunny roadside near our woods walk. Thanks. Nan

  • jannie
    18 years ago

    I once tried to make a garden of Queen Annes Lace,Chickory and Gooseneck Loosestrife. I thought the colors were very patriotic. Then I found out loosestrife is invasive, so I pulled it out. Now all I have left is the Queen Anns Lace.

  • pricem11
    18 years ago

    Nan, a type of Persicaria maybe?

  • loveroftheleaf
    18 years ago

    Need I say more?

    teeheee

  • romando
    18 years ago

    I like thistles... really!!! The bright magenta or reddish ones...

    Amanda 'romando'

  • yard_bard
    18 years ago

    Clover. As kids, we used to take fresh clover blossoms, pull out the white and purple petals, and suck the nectar out. Fond memories. Bees have the right idea!

  • theturtlelady
    18 years ago

    oxalis
    scotch broom
    honeysuckle
    asparagus fern
    All hellacious in the wrong place, but a lush and winter-hardy garden on my 26th floor terrace.

  • momofmany88
    17 years ago

    Gotta be the wild blue asters, or "Bachelor's Button" as my great aunt called then. The unplanted fields are always filled with them in SC in April.
    On a 1907 postcard of my grandmother's, from Kanses, it's given as the October birthday flower.
    And also I love the white Star of Bethleham. The grassy part is such a dark green, and the flower such a vivid white.....Shouts at you even from a distance!

  • terrestrial_man
    17 years ago

    I like Sonchus oleraceus, a California species of Sow Thistle. I like it because it is a soft herb that can be easily controlled and because the butterflies like its flowers and the hummingbirds like to collect the white tuffs of pubescence on the seed for use in building their nests. So I let some of it grow as well as cattails just for the hummers to use!
    {{gwi:736300}}

  • PRO
    it'sALLart
    17 years ago

    love mulliens. i transplant them and feed them, they get to be 4 feet wide and gorgeous, can take drought and nothing chews on them. later the goldfinches love their seeds and each spring i get a new batch. easy to pull out if you don't like the number of them or the location.

    purple violets, for sure, but they can be invasive.

    and love chicory but can't get it to germinate to save my soul. i need to just go and pull up some plants along the road but i never think of it, as they bloom at that time of year when you are just worn out from gardening.

    also, got a freebie from the birds: partridge berry... looks like a miniature euonimous (spelling?) and thrives in shade, under hostas and covers a nice mounded border in the north areas. wish it would spread faster!

  • fall-creek
    16 years ago

    I love the combination of the Queen Ann's Lace and baby blue of the Wild Chicory along the roadside. This year, my favorite weed is the Ironweed. It came up last year in a flower bed and was beautiful but very tall. This year, I pinched it back just once and it got so bushy and full! Next year, I plan on pinching it back several times to see just how floriferous it will get!

  • oakleif
    16 years ago

    I love all weeds except one so guess i'll have to tell my least favorite weed.--Bullnettle.

  • bandwagonforever
    7 years ago

    What a pleasant forum, it is so nice to read pleasant things people have to say. People actually love these flowers and weeds or you could say they adore them. Thank you. It perked me up. I love chicory, but I love many. Saw a whole group of gold finches this morning, maybe a dozen or fifteen, some perched on chicory. What a nice treat...that and this forum.

  • sylviatexas1
    7 years ago

    Yarrow is beautiful, hardy, &it has stopped minor bleeding for me. goldenrod is stunning. Wild purslane is a Hardy succulent and it is edible although found it very chewy LOL

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