# Why doesn't pot grow wild in the US?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 6, 2000, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706 "2000-07-06T03:26:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@aesop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aesop)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/1 "2000-07-06T03:26:35Z")
Marijuana is used regularly by millions of people in the US. I know the good stuff doesn’t have seeds, but IIRC, there was always plenty of seedy stuff in circulation. Even if only, say, 5% of the marijuana consumed in the US is of the seedy variety (a very conservative and purely conjectural figure), that still represents an awesome amount of vegetable matter. And seeds.
Some people grow pot in the wild and some percentage of these crops must on occasion go to seed. Some people deliberately introduce pot seeds into the environment (a la Johnny Reeferseed). Add to that the many, many (millions?) of casual users who on occasion must dispose of their seeds and it would seem that marijuana has no shortage of opportunities to enter the environment. Yet to my knowledge, it does not have a significant presence in the wild.
I have seen hemp growing wild in fields and even in urban areas in central Europe (I don’t know if it was a smokeable variety), but never here in the US. I would think my own back yard, the southeastern US, would be particulary suitable to the propogation of wild marijuana. Other nonnative species (e.g., hydrilla, kudzu, Brazilian pepper tree, melaleuca) have flourished. Yet marijuana, despite its many opportunities to enter the environment, remains an illegal cultivar rather than a wild-growing weed. What mechanism is at work here?
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### Author:  [@tcburnett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tcburnett)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/2 "2000-07-06T03:55:20Z")
The mechanism at work in Hawaii is that the marijuana growers don’t want their purebred crops diluted by some unknown varity of crap growing wild in the neighborhood.
It TRIES to grow wild, but we have an eradication program funded by the federal government to help keep the cheap junk under control.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/3 "2000-07-06T04:04:35Z")
A friend of mine once suggested they cross-breed it with Kudzu. Sounds like a great idea. I suggested he apply for a government grant.
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### Author:  [@justwannano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justwannano)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/4 "2000-07-06T04:07:40Z")
I know of several places where it has grown. Haven’t looked lately.
I found a fence row once that had two cash crops growing at once. Pot and strawberries both together. The sprayer killed it all with one fatal swoop.
Found a patch down by the river once.Damn sprayer got it too.
Maybe your problem is people in your neighborhood are too enterprising.
It is illegal. Every year there is a TV news spot that features deputies burning a patch they found.
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### Author:  [@Chas.E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chas.E)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/5 "2000-07-06T07:33:19Z")
I think your assumption is a little off-base. Haven’t you ever heard the expression “ditch weed?” Wild pot grows almost anywhere. There’s a ton of marijuana growing all over the USA, tended and untended. Timothy Leary once told me that in every state of the USA, Marijuana is the largest cash crop.
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### Author:  [@GaWd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaWd)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/6 "2000-07-06T12:13:00Z")
Chas E.'s 100% correct.
Ditch weed, AKA- Jimson weed, is a natural plant across the nor-east and central U.S. Every year, thousands of pounds of this slightly psychotropic plant is destroyed in the name of the “War on drugs”.
It goes down on the books as a win, and it’s never questioned, but a majority of the “marijuana” eliminated by these task forces is Ditch weed and not an effective drug most times.
-Sam
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### Author:  [@JimmyNipples](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JimmyNipples)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/7 "2000-07-06T12:48:01Z")
Marijuana grows **every where** except Antarctica and the North Pole.
Quite a stout little plant.
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### Author:  [@aesop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aesop)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/8 "2000-07-06T13:04:19Z")
I may be off base, Chas E., if as you say it does grow wild all over the US, but the scale of marijuana’s penetration into the environment seems far below what would be expected based on its opportunities to grow.
Have you seen ever seen the extent of kudzu growth in the South? Or Brazilian pepper trees in Florida? These plants cover many thousands of acres.
I don’t know of any eradication program that systematically addresses rural lands, fallow fields, vacant lots and urban sidewalks. Seems like a weed that is almost constantly being introduced into the environment would take a better hold than it has. I thought there might be a biological/ecological mechanism at work here, rather than a sociopolitical one.
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### Author:  [@GaWd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaWd)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/9 "2000-07-06T13:41:40Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I don’t know of any eradication program that systematically addresses rural lands, fallow fields, vacant lots and urban sidewalks. Seems like a weed that is almost constantly being introduced into the environment would take a better hold than it has. I thought there might be a biological/ecological mechanism at work here, rather than a sociopolitical one.
This, to me seems a socio-political issue, rather than an environmental problem.
Ever since Pot has been outlawed there have been eradication teams. That’s almost 70 years of outright elimination. Prior to eradication attempts, it was a plant that was endemic to the native societies and the environment.
As mentioned before, the pot plant(almost all verieties), grow all over the globe except for the harshest of environments.
Stories pertaining to “Ditchweed eradication”:
[http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v97/n277/a01.html](http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v97/n277/a01.html)
[http://www.mapinc.org/letters/1998/04/lte4.html](http://www.mapinc.org/letters/1998/04/lte4.html)
THe followign was ripped from [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/health-science/html98/hemp\_072898.html](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/health-science/html98/hemp_072898.html) and pertains to the ditchweed elimination programs"
> [@](#):
>
> Hemp is marijuana, period," said Shirley A. Armstead, a special agent and public information officer in the St. Louis DEA office. “Ditch weed is marijuana. We do not distinguish between the two. Our cannabis eradication program is about eliminating marijuana.”
>
> Industrial hemp advocates distance themselves from recreational marijuana users. In fact, any hemp organization that even hints of supporting recreational use is denied entry to the North American Industrial Hemp Council, a group lobbying to change current DEA restrictions on growing industrial hemp.
>
> Twenty-five countries, including Canada, England, France, Germany and China, produce industrial hemp. Both the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Accord on Tariffs and Trade recognize hemp as an agricultural crop. All members of the Group of Seven Industrialized Nations permit hemp cultivation - except the United States.
>
> “In the United States we are living on an island of denial, surrounded by a sea of acceptance,” said Erwin Sholtz, chairman of the North American Industrial Hemp Council. "The rest of the world says yes to growing industrial hemp. But we stick our heads in the sand and say no. The federal government has to say it’s marijuana because the minute that it’s proved otherwise, their ditch weed eradication program goes out the window . . . right along with their money
So, what I can glean in the 5 minutes of searching is that there’s a HUGE amount of socio-political garbage(surprise), surrounding the growth of ditchweed, and the government’s apparent confusion over what they consider “marijuana”.
Maryjane comes in several forms, from the omni-potent to the less than potent. Some of it will knock you on your hiney, other strains, like ditchweed, aren’t potent enough to get a cat high.
I don’t intend on making this a GD thread, I was just adding my 2 cents.
-Sam
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### Author:  [@hflathead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hflathead)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/10 "2000-07-06T14:01:30Z")
As a kid in Indiana, we could always find the industrial hemp variety along the railroad tracks. My understanding is that due to the heavy usage during WW II and later, the railroads would transport plants to processing facilities and on the way, plenty of seeds would fly out, thus the abundance of plants by the tracks. Anyone else verify this? later, Tom.
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### Author:  [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/11 "2000-07-06T14:09:04Z")
I always wondered how possible it would be to cross-breed mj with tobacco. People could walk down the street smoking what smelled like a normal cig, but getting higher than shit.
I wonder if genetic manipulation techniques will ever become cheap and easy enough for someone to put the genes that make THC into other things (like tobacco).
It does, however, almost seem like it’s getting less socially acceptable to smoke tobacco than to smoke mj, so maybe this would someday become a pointless exercise.
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### Author:  [@SqrlCub](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SqrlCub)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/12 "2000-07-06T15:22:09Z")
Pot does grow wild in the US. I for one have found it growing at Enchanted Rock, a park just north of San Antonio. I had heard rumours that the government sprays suspected plants from helicopters to kill wild plants. I think that would be prohibatively expensive and would violate some type or conservation law assuming there were other protected species in that habitat.
HUGS!
Sqrl
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/13 "2000-07-06T15:25:24Z")
I agree, pot grows wild in the US. You just have to find it. Try, say mississipi river banks. Should be loaded.
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### Author:  [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/14 "2000-07-06T15:36:22Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Ditch weed, AKA- Jimson weed, is a natural plant across the nor-east and central U.S. Every year, thousands of pounds of this slightly psychotropic plant is destroyed in the name of the “War on drugs”.
Point of clarification - Jimson weed is usually the name given to datura, not low grade wild dope. \*\*\* DO NOT \*\*\* mess with the stuff:
[http://www.mapoison.org/ctr/9512jimsonweed.html](http://www.mapoison.org/ctr/9512jimsonweed.html)
[http://www.naturalnet.com/jimson.html](http://www.naturalnet.com/jimson.html)
Active ingredients atropine and scopolamine. Nasty shit.
Back to the ditches, and the lovely little pot plants therein.
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### Author:  [@justwannano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justwannano)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/15 "2000-07-06T15:48:19Z")
I agree about the jimson weed.
For some reason my wifes cousins ate some one day. Their mom found them halucinating. They had to have their stomachs pumped.
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### Author:  [@zwaldd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zwaldd)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/16 "2000-07-06T18:19:26Z")
maybe the reason why the plant doesn’t propagate from casual and incidental seeding, is that the folks who do this return to the scene of the “crime” and dig up the plants before they have an opportunity to spread wild and attract the authorities. i remember doing something like that in high school.
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### Author:  [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/17 "2000-07-06T19:58:21Z")
On Saturdays, on the back page of the Free-Lance Star newspaper in Fredericksburg, Virginia, there’s always an old photograph of some local happening with a little blurb about the picture - sort of “Remembering When…”
A few years ago they ran a picture of two Confederate veterans who had come back to F’burg for a reunion, sitting along the Rappahannock River. This would have been around 1910 or so, IIRC. All around them, oddly enough, are pot plants, growing wild along the river. The newspaper even pointed it by saying in the little blurb, “Yes, that’s what you think it is.”
Just a little bit of history, “free for your tuition,” as Dr. Cromey used to say in class.
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### Author:  [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/18 "2000-07-06T22:37:12Z")
This time of year the pot is getting big enough to see from the car. I see how many patches I can spot going where I’m headed. Wisconsin is full of the ditch weed.
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### Author:  [@SoMoMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SoMoMom)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/19 "2000-07-06T22:46:40Z")
But it grows wild all over Missouri and Arkansas. It’s not the good stuff that people want to pay money for, but it can be smoked. It’s still illegal, even if you do happen to find it growing wild. My father got some goat manure from a local farm in Arkansas and everywhere he used the manure little pot plants popped up. We teased him about that. “What kind of people do you get your manure from anyway?” I had a little butterfly garden in southern MO that I allowed almost every plant that volunteered itself to grow as long as it wasn’t ugly. The blackberries were nearly taking it over when we moved. Anyway, when the pot started growing there, it also happened to be the same spring that we were invaded by aphids. That was the only kind of plant that the aphids did not attack. 😃 My husband was always on to me about pulling it out of there. I refused. I didn’t plant it there and I didn’t see any reason to disturb it since it had such pretty little yellow flowers. I kept waiting for the knock on the door from the PO-lice, but it never came. I wonder what the new owners of the property did with it. I wonder if they even knew what it was.
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### Author:  [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)
#### Post date: [July 6, 2000, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-doesnt-pot-grow-wild-in-the-us/24706/20 "2000-07-06T22:57:02Z")
The Iowa Visitor Center has little gardens tended by locals. On plot had so much pot growing in it, you could hardly see the other plants. I found it hilarious that they had this growing right outside the building promoting the state to tourists.
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