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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Are we a weed?

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  • From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Are we a weed?
  • Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 10:30:13 -0800


On Sunday, March 23, 2003, at 10:09 AM, Marimike6@cs.com wrote:

I do believe it's generally  the case that the hardy weeds of Eurasia have typically gone rampant in the rest of the world -- the zebra mussel is a good example--  while it is very rare for species from the smaller continents to gain a toehold in Eurasia

Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (and a bunch of other ecologists, too) explain the one-way flow of "weeds" this way: European weeds are often the plants that preferred tilled fields, and over the centuries selected themselves for aggressively moving into disturbed ground .So as Westerners cruise around the planet plowing and digging, we create huge sites from which these weeds can spread into other sites, even ones they aren't too well adapted too. The huge seed stock and population reserve just swamps out other species and prevents local extinction of the weeds. On the other hand, native plants (pardon my sloppy terminology; I don't have a lot of time to spend), selected for specific and often not widespread conditions, will have a much harder time moving into developed or human-modified land (i.e., most of Europe, lots of Asia, Australia, etc.) and a very difficult time moving into intact ecosystems that are unlike the ones they came from, like on other continents. They must compete head-to-head with well-established residents, and from a small population base. Maybe I haven't explained it clearly, but the one-way flow makes perfect sense to me.

I realize also that this is similar to what was said earlier about western cultures having a home base to draw resources from, ensuring their survival. Weeds have something similar in farmland. So that does make us a little like weeds--or weeds like us.

Toby


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