Alice Wolff, current Medieval Studies graduate student, publishes her article, "A thorny problem: defining weeds from the medieval to the present" in Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 2024.
Abstract:
Weeds are a troublesome category because they are plants with a mind of their own. They do not fall neatly into human dichotomies of wild plants versus domesticated plants, and as such have defied absolute definition for hundreds of years. This article traces attempts to define and study weeds from the late medieval period to the present day across disciplinary boundaries, moving between early modern agricultural writing, contemporary weed science, environmental history and archaeology, and biogeography. Two approaches to the study of weeds are laid out in this article: how people have defined the word weed over the course of centuries, and how the concept of the weed has been applied to specific plants. Drawing from work in vegetal agency and relationality, this article argues for weeds to be understood as unintended plants that play a role as neighbors and partners in agroecological systems rather than as unwanted plants, bad plants, or plants in the wrong place. Ultimately, this article argues for this ecological understanding of weeds as independent actors as a way to push scholars to recontextualize the ways in which they study the histories and futures of more-than-human elements in the world, particularly plants.
