Ecologists note that coyotes are practically impossible to kill. You can get rid of individual coyotes, of course, but the more man tries to reduce the population of this pesky species, the stronger and craftier it gets and the more it thrives. The species has built-in survival mechanisms so that whenever the population gets lower, more pups are born. Weeds are rather like that, too, as anyone who has tried to get rid of blackberry brambles can attest. (See the article on blackberry and other thorny weeds in this issue.) Weeds are nature's way of letting us know we don't yet rule the earth.

The common dandelion is an example of a "weed" that can defeat our best efforts, and yet I believe it has an undeserved bad reputation. It is an ancient plant of European origin, spread around the world--like so many others--by Europeans. It was valued as a food source, for settlers would stew the tender young greens or use them in salad. It was also valued as an herb for the liver and as a tonic. Many a settler's wife would make dandelion wine to enliven social gatherings.

Today, when we casually run out to the supermarket for prepackaged salad greens and cardboard containers of wine, dandelions have been demoted to the status of a weed. They mar the perfection of our manicured lawns, so we ruthlessly try to eradicate them, to little avail. Their airy seedheads efficiently spread hundreds of thousands of new plants each year. Coyote with leaves.

As we prepared this issue of Vibration, we struggled with many notions of what makes a weed. Some of the plants we considered including would chorus a devic protest, "We're not weeds, we're wildflowers!" It was hard to decide which ones belonged here, because the herbs or garden flowers of one place, one culture, or one historical era become another's weeds.

Plants indigenous to a particular area would often be demoted to weeds after settlers moved in. These native plants were displaced--just like the native peoples--when settlers brought their own preferred and familiar plants with them. Ultimately, some imported plants--devoid of natural enemies and no longer used for the same purposes--escaped from gardens and ran riot, becoming weeds themselves. Kudzu, originally imported from Japan to the U.S. as an ornamental, is virtually burying the South in its vines. (See John Stowe's article on Kudzu essence.)

Botanical history is a fascinating study, for it is ultimately humankind's history, so closely have we been linked to and dependant on plants. Progress in domesticating and hybridizing certain plants has changed the status of some plants. Wild versions of certain vegetables and flowers fell out of favor when we cultivated bigger, better, or showier versions, and so they came to be regarded as weeds. Wild carrot, the European Queen Anne's Lace, is no longer valued over the much larger garden version; the native wild strawberry would probably be yanked from a garden. While we might like seeing Dog Rose (Bach's Wild Rose) in the wild, we'd hardly tolerate it in our flower beds.

In the essence world, however, the wild versions are considered vibrationally more potent than the domesticated ones. Essences are generally made from wild flowers like blue flag rather than garden versions like the hybrid iris.

Many of the "weeds" we considered including turned out to have excellent medicinal properties. Shepherd's purse, for instance, is another European native that humans spread around the world. It is valued in Chinese medicine for its ability to stop bleeding and lower the blood pressure. The stinging nettle we try so hard to eliminate turns out to be a blood purifier and a help with rheumatism. So many examples of healing "weeds" came up that we decided to include them in a later issue on healing plants and their related essences.

Ultimately, the question of what is a weed and what is a valued plant comes down to this--it's a weed if we call it that, regardless of its potential to befriend us. If we label it a pest, if we labor to exclude it from our gardens and public byways, then it's a weed. In this issue, we will focus on essences made from plants commonly designated weeds. We will find that many of them have been needlessly maligned--that remedies based on these plants we spurn have wonderful gifts to give to humanity.

These plants have a strong life force that enables them to thrive despite our quest to eliminate them and despite harsh environmental conditions in the many terrains that typically support them. That same vital force makes many of them powerful in the energetic realm. In this issue, we invite you to challenge your definitions of what makes a weed and to make friends with some by learning about essences made from them.