Weeds have important properties for the environment and the benefit of the human

Posted by Team Maria on April 14th, 2019

The "bad" herbs, as they are vulgarly called, are not really so harmful to the environment and even to ourselves, but actually fulfill functions in the control of contamination, of pests, and in the fight against erosion. Among the most common we have about 300, some of which are in serious risk of extinction because of the persecution to which they have been subjected secularly. According the society only these 300 species cause annual losses in the crops of 780 million euros to which it would be necessary to add another 450 million that are spent on phytosanitary products for their control in crops. In spite of this fact, it is necessary to clearly delimit the concept of "weed", since in fact many of these species play important functions in the ecosystems. Here you can get Weed Online.

Of the 250,000 species of existing plants, approximately 7,500 are herbs. Among these, the nickname of "weed" could be identified with an herbaceous plant, of fast growth, of predominantly annual life cycle and with high capacities of production and dispersion of seeds.

Despite the above, some of these considered weeds, have important functions in the environment, which could even be used by man for his benefit, in addition to helping in the maintenance of the natural environment. Among the functions that could be highlighted and shown in the chart below, we have the following:

Many of these weeds could help colonize altered or abandoned media, thanks to their great capacity for survival and colonization, which would help increase soil fertility.

They are also very useful to avoid erosion on slopes and soils without vegetation and with little soil for the roots of other plant species. This is the case of the mad oats, the barley mouse and the vallico.

Many of these weeds, which inhabit their margins of crops, are favorable to the environment as well as to the plantations themselves, because they serve as a source of pollen and nectar for adult insects (eg, flies and wasps) whose larvae they are predators of aphids and   other parasitic species that cause pests. In this function we can highlight the white mustard the buttercup Ranunculus arvensis and the grass of Santiago.

Some weed species have the capacity to accumulate in their tissues elevated amounts of heavy metals (zinc, lead, manganese and copper), thus removing them from the environment. Among these species we have the sorrel, the alpine carraspique and the jaramago.

An important function of some weeds is also to have therapeutic properties, some of which are used for the elaboration of pharmacological products, as in the case of the opium poppy from which morphine is extracted, and the vinca from which vinblastine is extracted for the treatment of cancer.

Another function is to constitute valuable genetic resources for the improvement of crops. They can present favorable genes for cultivated plants, such as for example the resistance to a disease or tolerance to drought. These sequences are usually incorporated into plants grown through cross breeding programs or through genetic engineering techniques.

At present these "weeds" are losing their pejorative connotation, in such a way that even in the Scandinavian countries and in Germany there are regulations that make preserve in the margins of the crops the endemic "weed" plants that are in critical condition of conservation.