Honestly the best thing for wildlife is to learn to appreciate the beauty of last years dead stems and leaves in their own right. But if you MUST clean up your garden, wait until cherries pears and apples are done blooming and temperatures are not in danger of dipping below 50 degrees. Cut old stems to 12", leave leaves or rake them into beds where they can mulch naturally!

A “weed” in this case is defined as a plant that causes ecological harm by out-competing native plants.

Here we go again, Pacific Northwesterners! It's that time of the year! If you have a garden, for vegetables or ornamentals, now's the time to look for these. We've been removing shotweed (Caradmine hirsuta), Stinky Bob (Geranium robertianum), and creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) from our allotment.

But just wait - in another month, we'll have the first trilliums to look forward to as our reward.

Also, pretty. :-)

Posting this here because: This is highly misleading! Dandelions can be weeds, since a weed is a plant anywhere you don't want it. That word has no immutable botanical meaning.

Asteraceae, the sunflower family, contains many invasive noxious weeds. It just depends where they're growing. A bull thistle - also in Asteraceae - is a beautiful, culturally meaningful plant in Scotland, and a horrible weed in Washington State, for example.

In places where they compete with fragile native wildflowers, dandelions are absolutely terrible weeds! In some municipalities, they're legally defined as noxious weeds because of their ability to take over and outcompete both native plants and other food crops. We always, always recommend native plants before we would a nonnative, but especially when the nonnative is as hardy as a dandelion.

Plus: dandelions have a problematic history in the United States, because they were spread by European colonists, sometimes out of ignorance, and sometimes to deliberately outcompete native plants that First Nations and Native American people used.

Where they're native, though, go nuts. Love them!

I would hesitate to say the tail end of that last reblog is true in every ecosystem. I remove dandelions from my newer plantings that still have some bare spots but otherwise in my area, the only thing that dandelions will outcompete is gravel and bare dirt. Even turf grass can get an edge over flat-lying dandelions if it's left to grow longer.

To add another two cents; dandelions are very very good at the kind of landscapes that humans create. They love disturbance! And you know what disturbs a landscape? Constantly mowing grass on a lawn. Compacting soil in a park. Putting down a parking lot. You'll find dandelions in spades in these kinds of environments.

Dandelions are very annoying in human spaces but you actually won't see them in the woods, in tall meadows, in wetlands etc (you'll see plenty of other invasives, but not dandelions!). Dandelions are aggressive in their spread, but only in a certain kind of environment.

So it's almost unfair to say they out compete native species because generally they grow in spaces where human beings have already wiped out all the native species. They are a weed, sure, but it is human-made disturbance that is their primary distribution vehicle.

I certainly don't want to use our blog as a platform for discourse, but I think it's important to bear in mind that every place is different. Dandelions don't just invade disturbed areas, although that may be the case where you live. I appreciate that @plantanarchy mentioned this.

In many places, dandelions may not be problematic. In others, they are problematic, but are so widespread they will never be eradicated. They're excellent at drifting to remote boreal forests where they're some of the only nonnative species. They're particularly a problem around Alaska and northern Canada, in parks like Kenai Fjords and Denali, and sensitive subalpine zones, like Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Removal efforts are important in areas like those.

They're a plant 1600s European colonists loved and deliberately spread in North America, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad, either. The Europeans didn't do this maliciously. The dandelions did their job - they spread rapidly, outcompeted native "weeds" in flower beds, and survived tough conditions (we found a 1672 mention of how within just 40 years, they were established growing feral). They're definitely not the worst plant spread by 1600s Europeans. Lots of people (including First Nations and Native American people - thanks to the folks who pointed that out!) still use them today!

I think what's most troublesome for me is the idea that dandelions are a scrappy, unappreciated underdog. They're just a plant.

Also, pretty. :-)

Posting this here because: This is highly misleading! Dandelions can be weeds, since a weed is a plant anywhere you don't want it. That word has no immutable botanical meaning.

Asteraceae, the sunflower family, contains many invasive noxious weeds. It just depends where they're growing. A bull thistle - also in Asteraceae - is a beautiful, culturally meaningful plant in Scotland, and a horrible weed in Washington State, for example.

In places where they compete with fragile native wildflowers, dandelions are absolutely terrible weeds! In some municipalities, they're legally defined as noxious weeds because of their ability to take over and outcompete both native plants and other food crops. We always, always recommend native plants before we would a nonnative, but especially when the nonnative is as hardy as a dandelion.

Plus: dandelions have a problematic history in the United States, because they were spread by European colonists, sometimes out of ignorance, and sometimes to deliberately outcompete native plants that First Nations and Native American people used.

Where they're native, though, go nuts. Love them!

Hoodia gordonii in flower in the Tanqua Karoo.

Flat-Lays of Halved Walnuts and Other Shells Study the Diversity of the Botanical Fruits

Oxalis loricata, Patagonia, Chile

Photograph by Martin Sheader