feral culinary

The Paradox of Invasive Plants
By Timothy Lee Scott

“Every plant is a teacher-
But as in every crowd,
There are always
A few loudmouths.”
Dale Pendell, Living with Barbarians

Many years ago, my wife imparted the idea in me “there is no such thing as a weed”, and from then on I’ve tried to follow the assertion of Ralph Waldo Emerson that a weed is “a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” As a practicing herbalist, with training in Chinese and Western herbal medicine, I recognized these prolific plants deemed ‘invasive’ as valuable healing remedies that have documented medicinal uses for thousands of years. A few years back I began writing an article to vent my frustrations to counter the mainstream version of these plants as insidious, noxious species sweeping over our lands with vengeance and malice, claiming no benefit to the landscape. Through my deepening with these plants, I learned that these opportunistic species are providing essential ecological functions for the Earth by protecting, enhancing, and cleaning the soil, water, and air in which they live. This has lead to my adventure into writing a book to demonstrate the benefits of ‘invasive’ plants, and to uncover the origins of this fallacy of the ‘bad’ plant.

Or as some surmise about the ‘plague’ of ‘invasive species’: ‘insidious’, ‘evil’, ‘destructive’, ‘threatening’, ‘pervasive’ ‘pollution’…

Today’s ‘War on Invasives’ is full of ‘scientific’ theories and far-reaching policies based on opinions of ‘good’ plants verses ‘bad’ plants, in which the federal government, various corporations, nature-based organizations, and the puritanical public allocates billions of dollars trying to control the wilds of Nature. Deadly herbicides, destructive removal policies, and a hate mentality divert vast resources that could be better spent on more imperative issues like habitat preservation, studying plant medicines, renewable resources, and repopulating the land with those unique plants that are on the brink of extinction. This war results from individuals and Big Business with vested interests, who have created the belief that the movement of a new, ‘exotic’ plant species entering a ‘native’ ecosystem is harmful to the surrounding inhabitants.

Japanese Knotweed

All plants have been on the move for hundreds of millions of years with numerous factors helping them along into areas in which they did not previously inhabit. The idea of a weed was born with the invention of the ‘crop’ some 10,000 years ago, as a plant that interfered with agriculture. The nature of a weed is opportunistic and we, as humans, have created enormous holes of opportunity for these plants to fill. They have adapted to be at peoples side, waiting for those favorable times to cover the exposed soils we are continually creating. Weeds have evolved to withstand the punishments that humans unleash upon them, with ever-changing genetics of form, function, and transmutation.

The plants considered ‘invasive’ today were brought here and spread around with the help of people, and were cherished for food, medicine, ornament, soil enhancement, and scientific curiosity. Over time though, these plants have ‘escaped’ into the wilds and have found an ecological niche, in dynamic equilibrium, amongst the different species within the landscape.

Within their niche, all plants serve ecological functions for their environment. Mullein, for example, will blanket the land where fires cleared down forests. This appears as though the plant is ‘invading’ the land, but after a year or two, new species emerge and diversity expands. Mullein has acted as a kind of Earth balm that eases and covers with its leaves the internal burns and helps regenerate new growth- which it also happens to do for the human lungs.

http://invasiveplantmedicine.com/