Ruderal

Plants are central to Lois Weinberger’s artistic discourse on the relationship between nature and society. His radical poetics of the “ruderal”—literally, a plant growing on waste ground—is a counter to the anthropocentric ideal of 'primary nature,' acting, as he puts it, “against the aesthetics of the Pure and the True, against the ordering forces.” The drifts of wild vegetation that grow relentlessly on post-industrial wastelands and at the periphery of urban life are materially more untamed and therefore more ‘natural’ than society’s tightly-controlled zones of contemporary ‘wilderness’. Ruderals are the ever-present underclass of the plant world—the 'multitude'—ready to break through the surface of the city at any opportunity, cracking the veneer of human order and stability.

Japanese hedgeparsley is an annual (or sometimes biennial) forb introduced from Eurasia and found throughout much of the eastern United States and parts of extreme southern Canada. In North America, Japanese hedgeparsley is commonly found in ruderal habitats, such as roadsides, railroad rights-of-way, forest edges, and urban waste spaces. This species has not yet been listed as a noxious invasive, but its expanding populations have caused concern in several Midwestern states. The primary threat from Japanese hedgeparsley is its vigorous growth habit, which creates dense patches, and its dispersal ability, facilitated by its clinging, burr-like fruits. Some confusion on identification exists within the Torilis genus, with similar species (particularly T. arvensis) frequently misidentified in herbaria and the literature. Here, we review aspects of the etymology, taxonomy, biology, distribution, and management of Japanese hedgeparsley with the objective of increasing awareness of the p...