Weeds

Normally on Thursday we like to rant. Due to a few things
going on, that isn’t going to happen today. First we had a
few rants already this week; we are volunteering to work
the Blues Fest, and Keith Meyer sent me an email. Thanks
once again for the thought. Emails to us are like t-shirts,
if somebody goes to the trouble to send us one, we’ll at
least look at it. My first thought was what could I possibly
get out of a seven page article on weeds?

I was surprised. While we still don’t entirely buy
into the global warming hype, we can accept that the co2
levels would have to be higher than in the horse and buggy
days. We’ll add a link to the article at the end of this
post if you care to read it.

An article in the June 29, 2008 issue of the New York Times
magazine is by Tom Christopher entitled “Can weeds help solve
the climate crisis?”

In Maryland, scientists at the Department of Argriculture’s
research campus have been working on how increased levels of
carbon dioxide will affect how plants grow. They studied the
affect of increased temperatures and co2 in cities and in the
country.

At this point, one statement stuck out to us. It basically
said that carbon dioxide has recieved a lot of attention as
a greenhouse gas. But it is also, along with water, light and
nutrients, one of the four essential resources for plant
growth. The effect of raising this gas’s concentration on
plants is not really understood.

Lewis Ziska, a weed ecologist, found that in Baltimore the
temperature was 3 to 4 degrees warmer than surrounding the
countryside. He also found that the co2 level is well above
the current global average. In fact, it matched a level
that some experts predict as an average for the planet in
30 to 50 years. He set up three test beds, an organic farm
in the western part of the state, one by an inner harbor,
and a park in Baltimore. He took soil from the farm, which
already had seeds from 35 common weeds, to each bed to test
results.

He got a shock when the weed lambs-quarters grew to 6 to 8
feet tall on the farm, but to 10 to 12 feet tall in the city.
He made a lot of interesting discoveries along the way. He
found that restoration that took decades in a woodland, was
nearly completed in 5 years in the co2 rich air of the city.

We also found out that weeds cost U.S. farmers about 12
percent of their harvest, costing an annual loss of $33 million.
We also learned that some weeds we have today were actually
brought here for their beauty or utility.

Weeds mean different things to different people. To gardeners,
a weed is a plant out of place. To farmers, a weed is any
plant that interferes with profit. And to Ralph Waldo Emerson,
a weed is a plant who’s virtues have not yet been discovered.

Plants like red rice or wild oats are some of the most trouble-
some weeds today, but were once a food source. Weeds like
Canada thistle and quack grass are resistant to herbicides. And
cheatgrass in the western U.S. has changed the landscape due
to it’s combustability. When the area was native grassland,
fires occured once every 60 to 100 years, now that cheatgrass
has taken over fires occur every 3 to 5 years. Of course they
talk about the heat moving north also.

One other thing he found interesting, and on the web, is that
marijuana growers have an amazingly detailed knowledge of how
co2 enrichment affects their crop. He doesn’t look for any
scientific papers from this group anytime soon.

There is a lot more in the article
here. We still don’t like weeds, but at least we know more
about them. Comments on just about anything are welcome.