It’s Not the Weed, It’s How We See It

sushmita62
2 days ago
6 min read

Illustration of a kochia plant showing above-ground growth and roots below the soil, surrounded by terms like disturbance, succession, opportunity, indicators, and hyperaccumulators. — **Weeds: Disturbance, Succession, and Opportunity** A single plant can be seen as a problem, a signal, or a resource—depending on context, management, and interpretation.

What Do We Mean When We Say “Weed”?

A recent post sparked a wide-ranging conversation about weeds, with comments covering nearly the entire spectrum of thought. Some described weeds as indicators of soil problems. Others saw them as inevitable competitors that must be controlled. Still others pointed out that what we call a weed in one context can be valuable forage—or even a lifeline—in another.

What stood out wasn’t disagreement so much as how much meaning gets packed into the word “weed.” Before we talk about management—herbicides, tillage, grazing, or rotation—it’s worth stepping back and asking a more basic question:

What do we actually mean when we say “weed”?

“A Plant Out of Place”: Useful, but Incomplete

A common definition is that a weed is a plant out of place. While this phrase is often associated with modern chemical agriculture, the idea itself goes back much further—at least to the early 1700s.

English agronomist Jethro Tull (seriously, that was his name), writing long before herbicides existed, framed weeds primarily as competitors. In his view, weeds were plants that interfered with crop growth by competing for space, light, and nutrients. The species mattered less than the fact that they were growing where they weren’t wanted.

That framing still resonates today. One commenter summed up decades of experience bluntly: “Been using chemicals for 70 years and still have weeds.” Another responded just as plainly: “We’ve been cultivating for over 120 years and still have weeds—spray them.”

Both reflect a long-standing agricultural truth: weeds persist, and control has always been part of farming.

But defining weeds only as “plants out of place” strips away context. It tells us what we don’t want—but not why that plant showed up in the first place.

Disturbance, Succession, and Opportunity

Several commenters pushed the conversation in a different direction, suggesting that weeds tend to show up where soils are compacted, biologically depleted, or otherwise stressed. One encouraged people to dig and smell the soil beneath certain weeds or under cow pats, noting differences in structure and biological activity.

This aligns closely with what I learned several years ago in a course with Dr. Elaine Ingham. She challenged the “plant out of place” definition because it ignores ecology—especially succession.

Many plants we call weeds are early successional species. They are adapted to disturbed environments and tend to establish quickly, grow fast, produce large numbers of seeds, and form few mycorrhizal relationships. They are often the only plants capable of moving in when soil has been disturbed to the point that much of the soil food web has been lost—when fungi, protozoa, nematodes, arthropods, and earthworms have been reduced or eliminated by repeated tillage and chemistry, leaving behind mostly small, opportunistic bacteria.

In that context, weeds aren’t mysterious. They’re responding to opportunity.

In my part of the world, Palmer amaranth is a classic example. It thrives where disturbance creates open niches. That doesn’t make it a villain—it makes it a specialist.

Scale Still Matters

One of the more pointed exchanges in the comments wasn’t really about weeds at all—it was about scale. One person argued that soil under a weed couldn’t possibly be different from soil inches away where grass was growing. Another insisted the differences were obvious if you were willing to look closely.

Both perspectives contain truth. Soils are heterogeneous, even in fields that look uniform. At the same time, not every weed represents a precise soil diagnosis at the square-inch scale.

Long-term research helps here. At places like Dakota Lakes Research Farm, weeds aren’t treated as moral failures or perfect indicators. They’re understood as plants responding to opportunity, shaped by rotation, disturbance, timing, competition, and history over years—not just one season.

Animals Change the Conversation

Several commenters brought animals into the discussion, and rightly so. Livestock fundamentally alter how we should think about weeds.

Manure and urine recycle nutrients. Hooves create disturbance—but also seed-soil contact. Grazing changes competition. And perhaps most importantly, animals redefine value.

We’ve seen this clearly in our visits with producers like the Hamilton brothers, where plants such as kochia—often viewed strictly as weeds in row-crop systems—become highly nutritious forage in integrated livestock systems. The same applies to Palmer amaranth. In many cases, cattle will readily graze it and may even prefer it over certain grasses at particular growth stages.

As one commenter put it, “Animals eat weeds. It’s the salad to their life of lettuce.”

That perspective doesn’t deny weed challenges in cropping systems. But it reminds us that context matters. A “weed” in one system may be a resource in another.

Indicators, Hyperaccumulators, and Shortcuts

Several commenters noted that many plants we call weeds are hyperaccumulators—species that are exceptionally good at scavenging and recycling nutrients. There’s real truth in that observation. Plants like lambs quarters, pigweeds, kochia, thistles, and plantain are often dense in minerals, which helps explain both their aggressive growth and, in many cases, their value as forage.

But there’s also a risk in stopping the analysis there.

If we conclude only that weeds are recycling nutrients, it’s tempting to jump straight to a corrective input—adding micronutrients to suppress the symptom. Sometimes that works in the short term. But when the underlying causes remain unaddressed—soil structure, biological function, disturbance, lack of living roots, or weak competition—we can become dependent on increasingly complex nutrient packages without improving the resilience of the system itself.

The same pattern shows up in weed control more broadly. Repeated herbicide use, especially when paired with tillage, disturbs soil both chemically and physically. When those disturbances occur year after year, often with the same mode of action in the same rotation, they tend to reinforce the very conditions early successional plants are best adapted to exploit: open niches, simplified biology, and reduced competition.

One commenter joked about “herbicide deficiencies,” but the humor points to something real. Simplified systems—whether simplified biologically, chemically, or mechanically—invite pressure. Weeds respond not to intent, but to opportunity. And opportunity is shaped by the system we build over time.

Competition, Diversity, and Durable Systems

Some of the most grounded comments came from people describing integrated systems—small grains, under sown clover, better rotations, livestock, and competition doing the heavy lifting. One summed it up simply: “Competition is #1.”

Long-term research supports that view. Herbicides work. The real question is how well they hold up on their own over time. Systems built around diversity, living roots, rotation, livestock, and timing tend to limit weed opportunity in more durable ways.

Weeds don’t disappear—but they often become fewer, weaker, or less consequential.

Where This Leaves Us

Weeds are often indicators, always competitors, sometimes valuable forage—and quite often all three at once.

What this conversation really exposes is not who is right or wrong, but how differently we can interpret the same thing. Two people can look at the same plant in the same field and come to very different conclusions—one seeing a problem to be controlled, another seeing a signal, a resource, or a response. The data may be the same, but the meaning we assign to it is shaped by experience, training, and context.

That difference in interpretation showed up clearly in the comments. And it matters, because how we see weeds shapes how we manage them.

We can keep reaching for quick fixes—another product, another pass—or we can step back and ask harder management questions about rotation, competition, disturbance, biology, livestock, and timing. That kind of management takes more thought and more effort. There’s no getting around that. But over time, it is usually less expensive and far more durable than simply treating symptoms.

The cost of ignoring weeds as part of a system—and focusing only on control—is long-term land degradation and the steady march of resistance. If we want different outcomes, we have to design systems that make weeds less relevant, not just temporarily suppressed. That work is harder up front—but it’s the only approach that holds up over time.

Recommended Reading & Resources

For those who want to dig deeper, the following resources are accessible, farmer-friendly, and grounded in research:

Manage Weeds on Your Farm: A Guide to Ecological Strategies
Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE)
Free PDF: https://www.sare.org/wp-content/uploads/Manage-Weeds-on-Your-Farm.pdf
Cornell CALS – Weed Science & Ecological Management
Practical weed ecology, species profiles, and integrated management
https://cals.cornell.edu/weed-science
Fundamentals of Weed Science – Robert Zimdahl
A foundational text on weed biology, ecology, and competition
Preview/reference: https://archive.org/details/fundamentalsofwe0000zimd (available on line, some sites as low as $16)