"My own experience in the garden has convinced me "absolute weediness" does exist – that weeds represent a different order of being, and the fact that Thoreau's beans were no match for his weeds does not mean the weeds have a higher claim to the earth, as Thoreau seems to think. [...:] I jotted down each species preferred habitat. Here are a few of the most typical: 'waste places and roadside'; 'open sites'; 'old fields, waste places'; 'cultivated and waste ground'; 'old fields, roadsides...