#my friend asked me this on saturday we were taking photos in the bluebonnets

[quaranmine]

my biggest pet peeve is how many people in my life (knowing i know things about Plants and Science) ask me if things are weeds are not. stop asking me if that's a weed! weeds do not exist! there are no weeds! it's only a weed if you don't want it there! are you trying to make a pristine flower bed or growing crops? okay, then that might be a weed if you don't want it to be growing there. is it just growing in a random place? is it just growing in a field? then leave it alone, it's just a little guy! it might even be a beneficial little guy, you just don't like how it looks! now in some circumstance it might be a (harmful) invasive plant we should be eradicating, but most of the time i get asked this it is literally just some innocuous plant or flower

i'm for real gonna cry if one more person points to a native wildflower and asks me if that is a weed or not

#i know they just dont know but it's driving me a little mad helpppp #it happens a lot to me because i have a tendency to point out wildflowers and plants that i know how to identify #so i have a lot of people in my life who are like 'oh alyssa can help me with this plant question. is this a weed or not?' #but bestie i'm gonna snap if yall keep pointing to random innocent plants and asking this #it's only a weed if you want it out of your garden. or for it to not cause cracks in a sidewalk or smth i dont know #also i put harmful in parenthesis because dandelions are not native to north america but they're not really harming the ecosystem #my friend asked me this on saturday we were taking photos in the bluebonnets #and there was some other plant in the way of the photo and my friend was like is this a weed? can i pull it? #and im like. we are in a field. that is a native wildflower the same way the bluebonnet is #it's no more of a weed than the flowers we are taking pictures in right now? it just doesnt look as pretty. i just held it aside for the pi #anyway. like i said. pet peeve. this doesnt matter much i am just tired of getting asked it #because i find so many people want an excuse to pull up any plant that they dont like #but we need a lot of these 'weeds' for the ecosystem....if it isnt harming u then just leave it alone....