Comment by Lutger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lutger | Hacker News Reader

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It is worth noting because it brings more self awareness. The 'weedness' of the plant is a property of human culture, and it is worth exploring what that is. It doesn't mean the 'weedness' doesn't exist: there are many reason we don't like a plant and want to destroy certain plants and some are quite valid, like fire hazards for example.

For example, you quote non-nativeness as a self-evident negative property of the plant. But this is highly debatable. It is not clear at all what nativeness means in the plant world (really) or if it really is undesirable. There are some common ideas around being 'not beneficial to biodiversity' for example, but it turns out plants are relatively quick to adapt and gain relationships.

Dismissing these perspectives as non-sequitur and not worth exploring isn't really contributing to an insightful discussion. I'm not saying weeds are good or something like that, I just want to convince you this actually is worth noting and exploring.

It's not worth noting. There is quite a few people in this thread arguing for the sake of arguing about what a weed is in a thread about a very serious weed taking over very large swaths of habitat.

It's kind of disgusting.

It's not disgusting. It's a question of how we view nature. The idea that we can just preserve ecosystems as they were isn't very tenable. The idea that invasive species don't deserve to be invasive is questionable. We're making all these value judgements about what nature and shouldn't be. But nature has always changed, just depends on the time scale.

And life has always spread into new areas and become invasive. We did so migrating out of Africa. So does an ant colony floating on a log to an island that didn't have ants before. Life colonized the oceans, then it colonized the lands, and it colonizes new islands that popup, and populations shift around as the climate changes and new migration routes become available. The Sahara was a savanna thousands of years ago.

Were not out here trying to ensure a perfect pristine protection of the ecosystem. This is about a toxic weed spreading into areas we don't want it.

Next you'll be telling me we can just keep drilling for oil because humans are animals too.

> a toxic weed

That’s two very loaded terms to apply to an organism which has done nothing more than find a niche in which it excels. Do you have any justification at all to support the slander, aside from the juvenile mantra “native=good; introduced=bad”?

(keep in mind you’re a member of the most disruptive introduced species of all time)

Go live somewhere where tumbleweeds are a menace and your opinion will change very quickly.

Such as Australia, where they are a “native” species (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panicum_effusum)? You’re proving the point you don’t want to be.

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