Another fun fact about plant naming conventions: all lettuces* are the same species

*except wild lettuce but nobody really considers that a lettuce. Still, I guess it would be more correct to say all of the food lettuces are the same species.

Irrelevant side quest that I went on while double checking this: DuckDuckGo now forwards some search queries to their chatGPT wrapper, which prompted (pun intended) the following interaction:

It's a bit clearer in french; "weed" is "mauvaise herbe" which literally translates to "bad herb/grass".

My co-workers call me weed I think it's because I'm tenacious. So much in fact I have a meeting with HR on Monday probably a pay rise

How about honeysuckle vs trumpet vine? Both grow like hell, invasively, where I live. One is a tasty and pleasant treat when flowering. The other is just.. there, growing. A lot.

am i not supposed to want weed around?

i call this the weed paradox.

even though weeds grow unassisted. it is impossible for everyone to grow weeds in their garden. for is they try, they are no longer weeds

Weeds are just highly successful flowers that have earned resentment from others.

Fun fact: the name for a weed in my native language is literally "angry grass" :3

A weed is whatever your HOA says it is.

The general definition of a weed is "any plant growing where you don't want it to be". A corn plant in a bean field is a terrible weed.

OOP is the author of something like seven published novels, one of which has been adapted into a movie and another of which may soon be made into a streaming series. Never feel embarrassed to say what you learned today.

Weeds is just the gardening term for "their kind".

Just wait until he finds out about "tree"

My definition: aggressive spread and resilience to removal.

Plants that are pretty might get more of a 'pass' than ones which are ugly, poisonous or thorny, but ultimately, even the most beautiful flower becomes a weed when it's suddenly everywhere and you are fighting constantly to get rid of it.

In Spanish we call them "malas hierbas"

The idea of “weeds” is a colonialist construct.

My garden is all weeds. Tons of different plants, but some dominate in certain seasons, growing like 5 feet high. Seems to have avoided anything nasty though, no thistles, nettles or brambles.

My neighbour's garden is a thin layer of plastic astroturf. And they let a dog run about on it. Good luck getting dog diarrhoea out of that.

I know which I prefer.

Yes, this was a real educational technicality fuckup, it seemed sus but everyone was like "don't you know it's a weed"? - "No, no I do not. And you don't even have a field to worry abut crop yields, it's just a lawn & now there is a flower in it, wtf."

I know it's economy (or even sociology), but it's too close to biology not to directly explain it properly.

Is this fish but with plants?

Well, "weed" can be a legal definition. A lot of governments have a noxious weed list that either provides for consequences if you suffer that plant on your property, or just an excuse for the government to come on to your property to kill the weeds for you. For instance, Russian Olive is legally a "kill on sight" invasive plant in my area.

There’s a perfectly good definition of the difference between flowers and weeds.