This week on The Garden Lady it’s my great pleasure to have as my guest, Peter Del Tredici, horticulturalist, botanist, and author of my favorite weed identification book, Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide. 

Our discussion is about how most plants are “weeds” somewhere, and how we have used them and they have used us. In fact, many common vegetables were bred from common weeds, and some common weeds were once food crops. Carrots originated from Queen Anne’s lace, Daucus carota. The wild version had a thin, tough, pale root. The orange carrots we know and love today were developed through selective breeding. And crabgrass, the weed we love to hate, was brought to North America as a grain crop. It was cultivated much like millet in Eastern Europe where it was ground into flower used in porridge. It was especially valued as a grain that would live in poor soils. 

Carrots were bred from the Queen Anne’s lace plant. Queen Anne’s lace is now a naturalized weed in North America, Australia, and many parts of Europe. It is native to Southwest Asia.

My favorite weed id book for the Northeast. By Peter Del Tredici