learning my spaces: to weed or not to weed

chondrilla juncea, grindelia squarrosa, tragopogon porrifolius, erodium cicutarium, tribulus terrestris, ericameria nauseosa....

They are fun to say out loud and sound like Hogswart curses. I don't know what all of them mean, but I certainly know what they look like! 

When we first moved to the Idaho mountains, I looked at the brown September hills and saw weeds. Then snow. Then in the spring, what looked like beautiful flowers - and many are! But the "weeds" start early. 

That first year, they came in procession: the green spidery and the pretty little purple one, then the giant dandelion, and eventually the dreaded spiky one and the perplexing late-summer sticky one.

Storksbill and rush skeletonweed are the first two, one with pretty little purple flowers and one with rosettes in late winter. These are the worst, being low-moisture, invasive noxious weeds that spread widely and deeply and dry early, increasing the later fire risk in the hot high desert. Hours of my life have gone into digging out those stork’s bill roots and attacking the skeletonweed in various vain attempts.

Salsify pops up its humorous Rumor Weed head early after these, with fun yellow flowers that turn into giant fluff balls by June. The
diabolical goat's head (which Boise goes after at the annual Goat Head Festival) and the sticky, whimsical curlycup gumweed have their turn in August.

What I have learned from curious and persistent neighbors is that regardless of "native" nomenclature, all of these plants have uses. They may have originated in North Africa, Europe, and Asia, they may have inappropriate moisture content for where they have landed, they may puncture tiresand toes – and they may be freely gathered and used for good of people and animals. 

Salsify (from southeast Europe & North Africa and also named for goats – their beards, specifically) is a superfood tuber similar to potatoes and carrots and is even more nutritious. Free winter food for us in front of our house!

The mule deer and elk are chomping now on skeletonweed. Also called devil's grass, bane of this neighborhood, "highly competitive and aggressive," a noxious weed native to Europe, North Africa, & Asia that easily invades fields, clogs harvesting machines, and successfully competes with other plants for water - it has anti-oxidants and medicinal possibilities and helps the deer and elk survive.

Curlycup gumweed is maybe the coolest, with sticky flower heads that can be gathered and made into a tincture...which then looks like a jar of floating virus balls.

Even the leaves and shoots of goat’s head, called everything from devil's eyelashes to puncture vine, can be eaten if needed.

Along with all of these we fight, or at least try to manage, we have continual flowering of other bushes and stalks. It's a relief to just enjoy the sight of them, new colors blooming, changing, and moving on week by week.

One of my late summer favorites is rubber rabbitbrush, even with its clunky name. (Ericameria nauseosa is smoother, but not more beautiful!) It hides in plain sight all summer, adding silvery tones to the dust, and then in September it glows. Then it brings mental well-being for its human neighbors (along with chewing gum, dyes, and medicinal tea), pollen for the final pollinators, and erosion protection and nutrients for the ground. It gives. All its parts and more than its parts.

The more I know about what's around me, the more I see.