weed: "A herbaceous plant not valued for use or beauty, growing wild and rank, and regarded as cumbering the ground or hindering the growth of superior vegetation... Applied to a shrub or tree, especially to a large tree, on account of its abundance in a district... An unprofitable, troublesome, or noxious growth."
-- The New shorter Oxford English dictionary on historical principlesRead more about Weed: Ecological Role, Dispersal, Competition With Cultivated and Endemic Plants, Benefits of Weed Species, Weeds As Adaptable Species, Role in Mass Extinctions, Plants Often Considered To Be Weeds, See Also
Famous quotes containing the word weed:
“In the very midst of the crowd about this wreck, there were men with carts busily collecting the seaweed which the storm had cast up, and conveying it beyond the reach of the tide, though they were often obliged to separate fragments of clothing from it, and they might at any moment have found a human body under it. Drown who might, they did not forget that this weed was a valuable manure. This shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of society.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And they be these: the wood, the weed, the wag.
The wood is that which makes the gallow tree;
The weed is that which strings the hangman’s bag;”
—Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618)