Country Life UK – 24 June 2026 – Country Life UK

It is, we are assured, also the answer to that perennial query: ‘What’s the difference ’twixt a wild- flower and a weed?’ The Oxford English Dictionary is definitive, defining a weed as a ‘wild plant growing where it is not wanted and is in competition with cultivated plants’. The common dandelion (Taraxacum offici- nale), with its lovely golden head, will serve as an example.

On the verge, we see it posi- tively as prettifying, but growing on the grassy village cricket pitch, in front of the stumps, it is an obstruction that requires ‘weeding’. That’s that, then. The answer to ‘weed or wildflower?’ done and dusted. Whether a wild plant is a weed or wildflower is a matter of its location—plus human perception. The mosey- ing dog-walker admires the dandelion on the lane, the groundsman mowing the cricket pitch’s infield regards it as a problem.

Ah, the dear old dandelion, put on Earth to rebut the wisdom of lexicographers and to weed out ontological glibness. To itself, of course, Taraxacum officinale’s status as ‘wildflower’ or ‘weed’ is immaterial. It exists unto itself, what the German philosopher Immanuel Kant—who rather early got the hang of this being and perception stuff in The Critique of Pure Reason (1781)—posited as the state of ‘noumena’.

Humans can only know things as they appear to us or as ‘phenomena’. Neither do the 50 or so insects the dandelion supports care a fig about its classification, Kantian or otherwise. The bees of early spring are glad to visit it wherever Tollund Man, the bog-preserved corpse from the Danish Iron Age, consumed porridge con- taining cultivated barley and fat-hen (Cheno- podium album) for his breakfast before being hanged.

If the barley of his last meal was cultivated, the fat-hen may equally have been farmed or foraged. Highly nutritious, the Iron Agers grew it or allowed it to grow—an eminently sensible approach to food provision: let the edible plant that flourishes flourish, whether wild and sown by breeze or planted by a horny-handed human with a digging stick. Fat-hen was sold by hawkers as a leafy vege- table in Britain as recently as the 18th century, yet today? It is a bane ‘weed’ of agriculture.

What did the Romans ever do for us? We may gawp in awe at Hadrian’s Wall and Bath’s baths, but the empire’s legacy also includes ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria), which was introduced to the isles as a pot herb. The perennial jumped the villa wall to take root elsewhere. As John Gerard noted of ground elder in his Herball (1597), ‘where it hath once taken roote, it will hardly be gotten out again’.

Centuries of gardeners wail their woeful From left: Nettles, poppies, ground elder, dandelions and goosegrass, or cleavers, have their detractors, but also their champions, for their beauty, as herbs and as food Preceding pages: No one could deny the charm of ‘weeds’ along a Lake District lane, bathed in evening light.

Weeds? They’re only flowers in the wrong place Byron in Ravenna, pottery in Puglia, makers in Mallorca The trials of Frida Kahlo, chasing sheep and Halley’s Comet VOL CCXXVI NO 26, JUNE 24, 2026 Doctor Ella Ravilious Ella is a curator in the architecture and design department of the Victoria & Albert Museum. She is the daughter of James and Robin Ravilious of Exeter, Devon, and the granddaughter of Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 9eb9aa503515b1ed
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 54,429,466 bytes (51.908 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 0039051080
• Pages: 165
• Language: English (en)

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• Total Words: 43,676
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