Comment on Smoking Sonic's Stinky Feet
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I swear I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve talked to too many people who almost physically couldn’t comprehend that weeds are “plants that you personally consider undesirable in a given situation”. I watched their brain strain and creak under the idea that weeds are a useful, per-person per-scenario fiction and not a static clade of plants that exist to fuck up lawns and gardens. To the extent they ask follow-up questions, it’s trying to understand how it’s still a rigid group – like they think you’ve told them some niche, pedantic science trivia and not the literal definition of a weed.
Yeah, my mum is like that. She’ll readily tell you that you can put dandelion into salad, but also considers it a weed.
She’s also always very concerned what the neighbors think of our lawn (not that she ever asked), and one time she told me we had to mow the lawn, because dandelions are growing on there. When I told her that dandelions are flowers and that I think flowers look better than bland green, you could really see that she never even thought about it this way.
My dad has told me about a neighbor when he was a kid who made dandelion wine (I’ll have to ask him next time, but I think part of the story is that he was older and paid local kids to gather the dandelions for him).
Still looked like his brain was falling down the stairs when I told him what weeds are. The utility doesn’t matter; it’s a weed because it proliferates easily on barren, manicured turf, and while you’re welcome to feel however you want about the weeds, they’re weeds all the same.
Maybe teaching the difference between invasive and native would help?
Well, many non-natives are not invasive and some natives are invasive. Right plant, right place.
I’m pretty sure that invasive === NOT native.
More colloquially aggressive natives, but certain species of goldenrod, milkweed, locust…can be invasive if not planted in an appropriate place and among other strong competition.
Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
My goto is explaining how a plant can in certain situations be a weed and sometimes don’t. For example in a farm which farms clover seeds the grass is the weed! In a farm which farms grass seeds the clover is a weed! Same in agriculture, stray plants from the previous years crop often appear as a weed in the current years field.
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I didn’t get into specifics, but even concrete examples as a backup have failed. They’ll listen and understand the example on a narrative level (“this is a weed to Person 1 and here’s why, but not to Person 2 and here’s why,”), but everything fibre of their soul is clearly trying to ask indirectly: “okay, but how are weeds defined then?” It’s like you’d think they’re trying to square a scientific disagreement between Persons 1 and 2; it’s like they’re trying to figure out who was right.
What’s especially crazy to me too is that this has never, I think, been in the context of me challenging what they consider weeds and suggesting they reconsider; it’s just come up sometimes. I’m handing them the absolute, irrevocable right to keep their categorization of weeds exactly the same, but they act like a cartoon character trying desperately to not remember they’re walking on air.