I have been watching this plant shoot up out of my basil garden for the past few weeks and not sure if I should pull it or leave it be*.
That led me to think - aside from the vague classification of an aggressively invasive plant (think kudzu), what kind of trouble does a plant have to cause in order to be considered a weed?
The one pictured above seems to have a rather small, hairlike root system. Aren’t weeds supposed to have a big, nasty, throbbing tap root that makes them near impossible to pull up?
A few years ago I almost pulled up some unidentified growth that looked weed-like. Lucky for me, I waited and was pleasantly surprised to find out that a patch of snapdragons had taken residence in my garden, where they still thrive today.
I’d like to think that I’ve a bit wiser now after my snapdragon experience and don’t want to wantonly yank up any unauthorized vegetation on the grounds that I didn’t intentionally plant it.
Google searching for anything about “weeds” along with “how to tell” is, as you might have guessed, futile. However I now know how to tell my parents that I’m smoking weed and I know how to tell if my weed has been laced.
*as you can see from the pictures, I did pull it but then replanted it in solitary confinement until I can get a confession out of it.
Now that I have replanted it, I noticed something bizarre. The two leaves at the base are very different from the rest near the top. Those two have round, clean edges and are smooth. The rest are jagged-edged and oddly shaped, with those little fuzzy/prickly “don’t touch me” hairs.
Can one plant have two totally different kinds of leaf?
I have never planted any veggies. I sometimes take seeds from the kitchen outside to see if anything will grow, but never had any luck. And I don’t eat much in the way of squash.
I think I tried to start some pumpkin seeds last Halloween just for kicks, to see if anything would happen. But that was in those little square plastic starter containers that you buy pansies in, and I never saw any results.
When I rub the leaf with thumb and index finger, the scent is vaguely lettuce or cabbage-like. Not sure if that’s any kind of reliable indicator.
That was my first thought, too - “That looks like a cucumber.” I could totally be off-base here, but it seems to me like very few of the weeds I pull have a large, noticeable pair of seed leaves like that.
Those 2 little round leaves are the first 2 leaves that open and are called cotyledons, the plant is a dicotyledon. That’s just a general type of plant, not the actual plant’s name.
I agree that the plant looks like it is of the squash family, pumpkin, cucumber, etc. May have been carried there by a bird from someone’s compost pile or kitchen scraps. See what it grows into.
It sure looks like some kind of squash plant, very well could be a pumpkin! If it starts to vine out and have yellow flowers on it I bet that’s what it is. (pumpkins are in the squash family) I would tend to it for a couple weeks to see what happens! You never know what kind of seeds could be dropped in your garden by a bird or squirrel or bunny.
For several years I had tomato plants that would spontaneously sprout up in my lettuce garden! We call them “volunteers”.
One way I identify weeds is to bite a teeny weeny bit of leaf, if it’s bitter then it’s definitely a weed. But yeah, pretty much any plant you don’t want is a weed, no matter how pretty it might be.
I am now on the warpath against mint…I planted 3 mint plants in my garden last year and I had no idea how invasive they are! They took over half my garden. Now, any and all mint plants to me are weeds.
***So ***not a good idea. First of all it can’t possibly be an accurate test of whether a plant is a weed or not. “Weed” is not a family of plants; one plant designated a weed is no likelier to be bitter than the next. There are many plant families with members both inside and outside the garden gate. One horrible, noxious weed, purslane, is quite sweet to the taste and makes an excellent salad ingredient. And as invasive a weed as purslane is, other members of its genus *Portulaca *can be found for sale as a flowering plant at any local garden center.
Secondly, eventually you’re going to do this with a plant that might make you very, very sick.
Then again, the term “weed” is virtually meaningless. It’s your garden; if you say it’s a weed, it’s a weed. Most people define weediness according to invasiveness, ugliness, or uninvitedness. If you choose to define weeds, in your garden, by how they taste, there’s not really anyone to stop you.
I agree with Twickster–a weed is just a plant you don’t want. I have some “weeds” that I do like–forget-me-nots, and wild violets and wild sweet peas. Sure, they’re weeds, in that I did not plant them, do not know where they came from, and are growing in the wrong places. But heck, they can stay for now. I love garden surprises.
My definition of a weed: dandelion and St. John’s Wort. Not wanted. Not tolerated. Oh, and the blackberries… lovely fruits, but they’re insane plants.
I’m not tasting any leaves to do a weed test. Unless it’s mint. Yum!
Don’t forget raspberries for insane plants. I’m not putting any in my yard - I think I’ll plant them on the boulevard where they have containment on three sides, and put down two feet of barrier into the ground on the fourth.
For the record, if you use ‘weed’ & ‘classification’ in your search terms, you’ll likely get results which are more directly useful to your particular situation. This Perdue University site was the first hit, and it looks quite relevant.
Not sure this is true. While obviously there are deadly poisonous plants, e.g., water hemlock, I’m pretty sure that a “teeny weeny” bit of leaf will not cause serious (or possibly any) illness from any plant, especially if it’s spat out. In fact, I had a mycology professor in college, an expert at identification, who proposed exactly this method for recognizing certain species; he assured us that you’d not take ill from this method with any fungus, as long as you spat it out.
I agree that it’s not a useful method (go out and try a tomato leaf–but be sure to spit the nightshade out afterward!), but I don’t think it’s especially dangerous.
Naturally, we may be working with different definitions of “teeny weeny” :). I’m assuming we’re talking about an area of leaf significantly smaller than my pinky nail, closer to the size of a hangnail.
Note also that some plants, while not causing illness from the ingestion, may cause extreme discomfort. Consider what would happen if you did this with a poison ivy leaf. In fact, poison ivy’s example may be strong enough to contradict everything else in my post, on second thought.
Six or so beans from the castor bean will kill an adult human. Well, that’s not exactly a spit-out nibble, but toxicity definitely varies from none to whoa! My take on toxicity in the average garden is that there are many things out there that will make you fairly sick or even kill you if you eat lots of them, but the vast majority of people will never poison themselves in their own yard. I wouldn’t test weeds by nibbling either, though - visual recognition works well enough for me.
To anyone hellbent on defending this method: Please try it with the following.
[ul]
[li]Aconitum[/li][li]Datura[/li][li]Digitalis[/li][li]Nerium[/li][li]Ricinus[/li][li]Toxicodendron[/li][/ul]
I await your report.
