Lions in summer, tales of the misunderstood

By Jayne Spencer

The weed’s common name is taken from the French: dent de lion or, tooth of the lion, which makes this yellow-headed bloom highly poetical, at least to those of us with a front yard full. Another common English name for the weed is pissabed, from the Dutch, and, he writes, “may be descriptive of the result of eating it, for among its many medicinal effects, one is as a diuretic.”

Heiser’s Weeds in My Garden: Observations on Some Misunderstood Plants has just been published by Timber Press and explores the weeds that have found their way into the Botany Experimental Field at IU Bloomington, where he has grown plants for more than half a century. His early work focused on sunflowers (Helianthus), a genus that includes several cultivated plants as well as a large number of wild species some would call weeds.

Through those studies, Heiser first became interested in natural hybridization, its evolutionary significance and the origin of domesticated plants. Then he was led to consideration of the origin of agriculture.

Heiser also is an authority on a number of other plants— mostly ones of economic importance— such as chili peppers, naranjillas, various gourds and the totora. In recent years, much of his research has been involved with plant breeding.

His affection for weeds grew out of his early days as an undergraduate and includes a regard for the pokeweed (or pokeberry), a renegade that seems to have the ability to sprout from asphalt, grow a trunk the diameter of a coffee can and sprout berries that are said to be poisonous, although Native Americans are said to have brewed a tea for the treatment of arthritis. (Please, dear readers, don’t try this at home.)

Heiser was a student at Washington University during World War II. Gas rationing kept him close in to his St. Louis campus. He didn’t get out much, that is, out in the country where wild flowers and vegetation flourished.

So the young botanist started visiting the vacant lots, railroad yards, urban garden plots and other sites that were inhabited by weeds.

“Weeds are fascinating to me, and by writing the book, I hope to convey why to others,” he said. “Weeds are very important to us in other than a negative way.”

This is one gardener worth reading: he’s served as president of the Botanical Society of America, the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Society for Economic Botany and the American Society of Plant Taxonomists.

http://www.timberpress.com