This is a question that leads excellently into a whole essay I have inside of me.
In case this long-ass rambling essay randomly breaks containment, it’s worth saying upfront: I coined the term “plantcraft” to talk about gardening as intention+geography, and to ruminate better on our relationship with nature; I practice intentional gardening for food and eco reasons; I’m fairly knowledgeable on my topics, and in addition to working with my local communities I am occasionally tapped for this knowledge, therefore have been peer-reviewed IRL as a lore-keeper; I am involved in local and online eco groups and their efforts in #nomowmay, signs for nature, and other movements towards friendly educational inclusive eco-practices; I am a published scientist with 15+ years experience in science communication; I tend towards practicalities; I regularly teach small children how to engage with nature and domesticated plants; i am an immigrant living in the UK; I have been developing a political lens around plantcraft-as-response-to-aesthetics; and I’m really fucking funny. I love doing jokes.
Anyway I have to say that obnoxious paragraph up front, because otherwise people might feel really furious and defensive about what i’m about to say here. In conclusion, I’m not mad at anybody.
So! many online people enjoy dandelions; they have many political, ideological, and aesthetic associations that resonate with people. (for example, if you are rebelling against your dad. If he spent a lot of time and money in a gardening practice that was incompatible with dandelions, then you can ally with dandelions, to set yourself up in opposition to that.) dandelions are sunny, they undergo pleasing transformations, the fluff is charming, and some people even find them palatable. much art has gone viral across many social platforms on the topic of how dandelions have a political affiliation as a rebellion against your dad , and many positive human qualities have been attributed to them: resilience, the strength and cunning of the underdog, “a weed is a treasure in the right place (just as I am understood better in my chosen community than in my birth family for example)”, the ability to thrive in adverse situations, toughness, difficulty to eradicate, etc. In general these values resonate with people who feel disaffected or marginalised.
Recently, people on tumblr discovered that the common yellow dandelion they saw in dad’s lawn in the USA is not native to the USA. The “common dandelion” is not native to the USA! The underdog is an invader! The good thing has bad origins! This was a shock, as everyone believes that the USA=the world, and something being labelled “invasive” goes against the politics that people WANTED to put on common dandelions.
(Plantcraft asks us to consider the plant as itself, without our projections; this allows us to reflect on how these political motivations and qualities are assigned in response to a VERY specific environment and culture. We must remember what qualities are innate to the plant, and which we have fostered ourselves. These are not the qualities that, say, a medieval Polish herbalist applied to dandelions; these properties are not in any way inherent to the plant, they are just our own reflections of a specific space/time/politics. The plant is a stand-in here, because we believe it to be the enemy of Kentucky ryegrass, and therefore the political ally of those who dislike the politics that we have embodied in the grass. Meanwhile, if you view both plants under a microscope, neither will contain any detectable levels of justice or injustice, any more or less Right to Be Here; we will not find those in the plant: we will only find those with a mirror.)
Discovering that these same common-or-European dandelions are not native to the USA was a beautiful online moment because of that. I was surprised by the speed at which it happened; it was early this year, and I think someone was trying to gotcha a nature blogger. Then all of a sudden the fact spread - like dandelions, in fact. A quick pivot from “funfact! Dandelions are edible!” To “funfact! Dandelions are INVASIVE.”
(Asterisk: polite and useful and cute and articulate immigrants, like dandelions and earthworms, are not considered invasive, but naturalised. They’re expats, actually! They’re border-crossers that contribute to the economy. You get a whole different word if you fit the right political immigration criteria!)
(This is why I had to have that paragraph up front, because I’m compelled to make jokes like this.)
Anyway, a funny bit was EVERYONE TRYING TO PRETEND THEY HAD KNOWN THIS ALL ALONG. this was important to save face i think.
Now it is suddenly important to qualify the presence of dandelions. They may be cute and pretty, but they’re problematic. (I joke.) Actually, it’s fair. More than fair. The viral memes about political correctness of dandelions have penetrated the public consciousness - they’re shared all over Facebook, and your mom has shown them to your dad - so it makes sense to get the new information out too.
This is genuinely so great because this time last year the tags on this post (which came out in 2020, note the earlier tags and their flavors) would all be DOWN WITH MONOCULTURE and DANDELIONS ARE EDIBLE and I WANT A LAWN THAT LOOKS LIKE THIS, but this year we are seeing this! Quite a quick shift too. Well done folks.
I think this is fantastic. Because my political orientation here is plantcraft, and plantcraft’s goal is “everyone having a better relationship with plants,” and people knowing EVEN MORE about plants is RIGHT and GOOD.
However - I am also a joker, and very possessed by the spirit of mischief. remember how plantcraft is intention+geography? Remember how I said that I was involved in the movement of “placing signs to inform the public that apparently neglected unmown areas are deliberate?” Remember about me being an immigrant?
Heeheehee! we must remember that America is not the universe! The tradition of placing cute signs to reframe unruly areas is very very British. Corby and Kettering are allied councils in Northamptonshire. This photo was taken in the UK! They are native. Nativity is defined by geography! This was not the geography you thought it was! Seeing this, please throw your rocks aside.
The political status of “European dandelion” in the USA is unfixed, mutable, capable of veneration or cancellation as our moods require. Weeds/not-weeds is a fluctuating category: the moment in which the thing is Othered is as mutable and whimsical as any other binary identity. The movement from one category to another, and the decision about what treatment the category deserves, is largely down to other people’s desires. Today you must use that bathroom; tomorrow, you are a girl. Today, you may have a rainbow parade; tomorrow you may not go near children. Yesterday, it was considered unrealistic to show people like you on television; today, it is considered shocking not to. Today, you are citizen; tomorrow, refugee. Sometimes, things are suddenly placed into categories of Bad, and not allowed to live. But the Badness was never written in its genetic code. The category itself is artificial and political: a human has decided to make a border. Tomorrow, the human may decide differently.
A dandelion would find this all very puzzling. It was not aware of having any motives at all - neither untidiness nor colonisation nor resilience - it only traveled with the wind.
In the UK, where relationships are different and European dandelions are native… we do not need to be pious about these particular dandelions. They belong perfectly well on that verge. When we stand on geography where they belong, they are cheerful native wildflowers growing in the verge. When you are an American pointing to them on the internet, they are non-native (and we DO condemn!) When you are your dad, they make a space look messy and unloved. When you are a person placing a cute sign, they make the space a educational gardening project. When you are abstracting the image-of-the-common-dandelion at layers of removal, it can symbolise the neglect of one’s garden; or it can symbolise resilience in an adverse society; or it can symbolise European colonisation - perhaps it will become this in the future, with a movement like LandBack developing the image of the dandelion into an avatar representing “colonisers that tried to legitimise themselves by inventing their own folklore.”
Or perhaps we will take dandelions as a global flag into outer space, as the great Icon of Humanity, and peacefully show this picture to aliens, and say, “this is not a sun; it is a flower, a quiet being from our home geography which is special to us; to us it is a symbol that means ‘peaceful and honest travelling.” we cannot know how our moods will change. We can only predict the rate at which today’s scrappy hero is tomorrow’s trash, and, perhaps, question why everything in the natural world has to be aligned with superhero-movie-ethics.
When you are a dandelion, you simply grow and reproduce. When you are a bee, you just see flowers. Today, they are yellow; tomorrow, they will be clocks. We cannot really control them, no matter how much we try; we can only control our moods, our emotional response to the living truth of the thing.
As for whether or not they provide much actual food for the British bees, as the sign implies… well. Several answers there. Some food, but not much. However, what’s MOSTLY happening here is that the councils are NOT spraying these verges with weedkiller. Weedkiller, in addition to being harmful to bees, is damaging to the whole environment - and expensive to boot. (It’s worth noting that this isn’t a lawn, or purposeful private space, but a verge, or municipally-maintained public space on the side of a road; if it was full of rubbish, or otherwise looked neglected, people would find it a depressing commentary on the state of their home town. People often want their tax money to make things look nice, so signs like these reframe it: instead of spending your money on poison, we’re doing this! The sign changes your mood and emotional response! Doesn’t it look nice?)
Plus, bees are cute; they rhyme; politically, they’re a stand-in for many human projections that the sign-makers are trying to evoke; and people know what you mean by it. So the sign isn’t so much endorsing the dandelions as a superfood for bees, which they aren’t, as it is about cutely explaining why there are “weeds” and that it is eco (“bees”). I can see why it’s confusing, though. It is, once again, because we are using nature as avatars for complicated abstract human communication: “weeds” to acknowledge and excuse the untidiness, “bees” to represent All of Nature.
Unpacked, with every hieroglyph and abstract reference unfolded, you could read the sign as, “note well! We acknowledge that the historical visual message conveyed by the presence of these plants, as interpreted by the public, is untidiness/neglect, which may lead you to question if this public space is being cared for. We, the council, ask you to excuse our apparent disinterest in the state of this verge, as we have done it deliberately: lo, behold! Your taxes are feeding small and cute things, as pictured here, which you will associate with positive environmental change.”
It is definitely confusing, when we talk in shapes. But we are so good at doing it.
There are a lot of take-home messages here, but the one that stands out to me is that plantcraft core of reminding ourselves to check our intentions and our geography. We should do that before looking at the question of who gets to be a weed.
Long May we do so; long May we thrive; and #nomowmay.
