Sign 22 (27) - WEEDS, WETLANDS, WILDLIFE AND MAN
 

       A WEED to the gardener, firmer or forester is a plant unusable or unwanted where it grows - corn in a rose patch, orchids in the cranberry bog, "worthless" boxelder, beech or hemlock in the logging forest. Unfamiliar plants of waysides, fields, woods or wetlands are "weeds" to most people until properly introduced as interesting or valuable personalities. Submerged water plants are also called weeds (see sign 30). But to the ecologist, weeds are a specialized group adapted for taking advantage of temporary removal of permanent vegetation by fire, flood, erosion, animal diggings or man's activities. Soil disturbance triggers their germination, and they grow rapidly, making full use of the abundant light, minerals and moisture. They produce prodigious numbers of mostly long-lived seeds. The plants are usually short-lived and cannot tolerate competition. The next generation succumbs to its own crowding if not the returning slower-growing permanent vegetation. Half are Eurasian, the rest American. Today the ecological weeds fall into two groups - "Bad and Good":

1. Wild weeds perpetuated by natural or man-made soil disturbances and mostly not used directly by man; hence a nuisance: ragweeds (main cause of late summer hay fever), smartweeds, pigweeds, cocklebur, burdock, certain thistles, witch and foxtail and barnyard grasses, and 150 more. These have great wildlife value -see sign 8 (29).

2. Domesticated weeds now perpetuated by planting and intentional soil disturbance and bred and selected for faster and higher production, which is made possible through additional care: more fertilizer, more water, and freedom from competition by other weeds (by plowing, cultivating, wide spacing of plants): Corn, rice, wheat, oats, rye, barley, cotton, tobacco, hemp, flax, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, peas, beans, clovers, alfalfa, smooth brome, Kentucky bluegrass, winter rye, and most garden flowers both annual and perennial.

DOG-IN-THE-MANGER WEEDS: Both wild and cultivated weeds include some that have become permanent factors in active and abandoned farms and in most of our once-disturbed natural lands because, unlike most weeds, they are long-lived and can stand both competition and disturbance once they are established. Most of these are exotics, probably lacking some of the natural controls they had in Eurasia, as probably is the case with the invading Tatarian honeysuckle and European buckthorn shrubs in our woodlands and shores.
 

WETLANDS AND EDIBLE WILD PLANTS: Wetlands are especially rich in lush and diverse weeds because of their abundant moisture and fertility and because water level fluctuations and siltation and wave action periodically recycle the soil and vegetation and expose muddy shores where new weeds can get started.

A thousand years ago, the effigy mound-builders chose places like Picnic Point and Eagle Heights, overlooking wetlands, for marking their religious and burial sites: Wetlands with their weeds provided or attracted the abundant fish and waterfowl and plants as well as providing water, boat travel routes, and landmarks. Some weedy lowland and shore plants used by wildlife and probably by some Indians and/or early settlers but not grown commercially at present, are found here or are to be planted soon: