The Writings of John Burroughs — Volume 05: PepactonBurroughs, John
History
The Writings of John Burroughs — Volume 05: Pepacton
Burroughs, John
Natural history -- Outdoor books
There are few more obnoxious weeds in cultivated ground than sheep-
sorrel, also an Old World plant; while our native wood-sorrel, with
its white, delicately veined flowers, or the variety with yellow
flowers, is quite harmless. The same is true of the mallow, the
vetch, the tare, and other plants. We have no native plant so
indestructible as garden orpine, or live-forever, which our
grandmothers nursed, and for which they are cursed by many a
farmer. The fat, tender, succulent dooryard stripling turned out
to be a monster that would devour the earth. I have seen acres of
meadow land destroyed by it. The way to drown an amphibious animal
is never to allow it to come to the surface to breathe, and this is
the way to kill live-forever. It lives by its stalk and leaf, more
than by its root, and, if cropped or bruised as soon as it comes to
the surface, it will in time perish. It laughs the plow, the hoe,
the cultivator to scorn, but grazing herds will eventually scotch
it. Our two species of native orpine, SEDUM TERNATUM and S.
TELEPHIOIDES, are never troublesome as weeds.
The European weeds are sophisticated, domesticated, civilized; they
have been to school to man for many hundred years, and they have
learned to thrive upon him: their struggle for existence has been
sharp and protracted; it has made them hardy and prolific; they
will thrive in a lean soil, or they will wax strong in a rich one;
in all cases they follow man and profit by him. Our native weeds,
on the other hand, are furtive and retiring; they flee before the
plow and the scythe, and hide in corners and remote waste places.
Will they, too, in time, change their habits in this respect?
"Idle weeds are fast in growth," says Shakespeare, but that depends
upon whether the competition is sharp and close. If the weed finds
itself distanced, or pitted against great odds, it grows more
slowly and is of diminished stature, but let it once get the upper
hand, and what strides it makes! Red-root will grow four or five
feet high if it has a chance, or it will content itself with a few
inches and mature its seed almost upon the ground.
Many of our worst weeds are plants that have-escaped from
cultivation, as the wild radish, which is troublesome in parts of
New England; the wild carrot, which infests the fields in eastern
New York; and the live-forever, which thrives and multiplies under
the plow and harrow. In my section an annoying weed is abutilon,
or velvet-leaf, also called "old maid," which has fallen from the
grace of the garden and followed the plow afield. It will manage
to mature its seeds if not allowed to start till midsummer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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