Ever since the first human settlements 10,000 years ago, Weeds have dogged our footsteps.
One persons weed is another's wild beauty..
Weaving together the insights of botanists, gardeners, artists and poets with his own life-long fascination, Richard Mabey examines how we have tried to define them, explain their persistence, and draw moral lessons from them.
Cow parsley has become the fashionable adornment of Spring weddings.
Burdock was the inspiration for Velcro.
Weeds were the first crops, the first medicines.
Yet living so intimately with us, they have been a blessing too.
They are civilisations' familiars, invading farmland and building-sites, war-zones and flower-beds across the globe.
They are there as the punishment of 'thorns and thistles' in Genesis and , two millennia later, as a symbol of Flanders Field.
Ever since the first human settlements 10,000 years ago, Weeds have dogged our footsteps