The Shocker Guide to Other Weeds That Deserve Some Shine
Happy April 20th from The Shocker! It is indeed time to celebrate weed! Pesky, bane of your dad’s lawn care routine, forever underfoot and not asking for much more than rain and sun and sometimes a host body to choke out and kill for its own purposes — weed! But why choose just one when there are so many strains out there? Frankly, it’s always struck us as stupid and just a little bit pedestrian that there’s a whole day dedicated to one. What if we told you there was a weed that could painfully blind you, and another that could cure your disgusting, lingering gout, would you still want to stick with the one for basics everywhere? Yeah? That’s what we’re about to do.
Giant Hogweed: There’s a reason this weed doesn’t have an appreciation day — it’ll blind your ass. Besides being an invasive species on steroids that can grow to primordial sizes, giant hogweed is also phototoxic, so if the skin its sap lands on is exposed to sun it can cause phytophotodermatitis, which is short for blackening blisters and eventual lesions. Anyway, a very non-chill weed and while it is deserving of your fear and respect it doesn’t deserve your time or attention.
Dandelion: This is an underrated weed that marks the coming of summer, as it’s often the first flowering plant to force its way up out of the grubby slush and sludge of mid to late spring. Did you know it’s the first flower most bees depend on for food? And if you kill it just for the sake of your lawn you are hurting an already precarious ecology that civilization relies on for something like 90% of the food we eat? Selfish. This weed deserves at least a week of celebration and a lifelong abiding respect.
Creeping buttercup: Sounds like a Ty Segall side project. This weed is poisonous to horses but horses know not to eat it, even if it’s just tossed in a cluster of their solid favs like clover and broadleaf plantain — isn’t that cool? Horses are the best.
Broadleaf plantain: It’s likely you’ve seen this short, ground covering weed everywhere, usually covered in dust coming up between sidewalk cracks and like, edging small-town baseball diamonds or whatever. This weed is almost more impressive than the famous weed (THE “weed”) because it: heals wounds, is an anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, weak antibiotic, immune modulating, can treat fever and respiratory infections, treats dysentery, diarrhea, soothes raw throats, and stimulates the kidneys which is handy if you’ve ever got a case of gout. Overall, a cool, ancient weed.
Ground ivy: A romantic sort of weed, isn’t it? You see these climbing up a tree trunk and you know there’s a man chasing a lady through the moors somewhere, tripping over a big ole clump, or, if it’s covering a really extensive area of ground don’t you just want to hack away at it and discover a secret door to another dimension? Love a weed with imagination.
Clover: Never found a four-leaved one of these in my whole god dang life but isn’t the promise, the myth, worth it, and isn’t that why you keep looking? Sort of like an analogy for life itself, isn’t it? Weeds man, they got it all.
Thistle: Beautiful but deadly. No, they’ll just prick you a lil if you try and yank one out of the ground. The roots cause flatulence if ingested, making this one prankster of a plant.
Stinking Willie: Another side project by a middling white musician OR a weed with a latent toxic effect that cumulates the more it is ingested, and will eventually damage DNA and kill cells? Honestly, when it’s 11pm and you’re still waiting for the headliner to come on, those things can feel the exact same.
Common daisy: A true cutie.
Veronica filiformis aka Whetzel weed aka Caucasian speedwell: Reproduces asexually and who hasn’t wished for that, some days?
