Let us suppose a wheat farm in western Kansas is abandoned, not an unusual event over the last 100 yr. For the first year or two after abandonment, the fields are covered with massive stands of sunflowers and Russian thistles (Salsola kali L., vr. tenuifolia Tausch). These two species, the former native and the latter alien, are on everyone’s weed list. But, the people have left and gone to town; there is nobody around to dislike them. Have they stopped being weeds? As a matter of fact, the weeds have now become useful plants in stabilizing the soil, preventing wind erosion, and reducing water erosion. It is true that weeds are often unwanted, but that is not what makes them weeds…

Indeed, Homo sapien is perhaps the weediest of all species, and the more he dominates the landscape, the more he seems to thrive. If we confine the concept of weeds to species adapted to human disturbance, then man is by definition the first and primary weed under whose influence all other weeds have evolved.

Jack Harlan from Crops and Man

(via goodaesthetic)