Weeds are just highly successful flowers that have earned resentment from others.
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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How about honeysuckle vs trumpet vine? Both grow like hell, invasively, where I live. One is a tasty and pleasant treat when flowering. The other is just.. there, growing. A lot.
Same rules apply. If you don't want it there, it's a weed. If you don't mind it being there, it isn't.
My co-workers call me weed I think it's because I'm tenacious. So much in fact I have a meeting with HR on Monday probably a pay rise
It's a bit clearer in french; "weed" is "mauvaise herbe" which literally translates to "bad herb/grass".
What about invasive vs naturalized?
Another fun fact about plant naming conventions: all lettuces* are the same species
*except wild lettuce but nobody really considers that a lettuce. Still, I guess it would be more correct to say all of the food lettuces are the same species.
Irrelevant side quest that I went on while double checking this: DuckDuckGo now forwards some search queries to their chatGPT wrapper, which prompted (pun intended) the following interaction:
More powerful AI says:
No, not all lettuces are the same species, although many commonly consumed lettuces (e.g., iceberg, romaine, butterhead, oakleaf, and leaf lettuce) belong to the same species, Lactuca sativa.
However, some plants commonly called "lettuce" belong to different species or even genera. Examples include:
Lactuca sativa: The typical garden lettuce varieties (iceberg, romaine, butterhead, oakleaf, loose-leaf lettuces).
Lactuca serriola: Wild lettuce, an ancestor to cultivated lettuce.
Valerianella locusta: Corn salad or lamb's lettuce, commonly consumed as lettuce but from a different genus.
Cichorium endivia: Endive, sometimes called lettuce but technically not in the lettuce genus (Lactuca).
Eruca vesicaria (Arugula or rocket): Often mixed with lettuces but belongs to an entirely different genus and family.
In summary, while most common lettuces belong to a single species (Lactuca sativa), not everything commonly called lettuce or used similarly in salads is botanically the same species or even genus.