In South Florida, we have so many. Brazilian Peper (Schinus terebinthifolia) is a big on. Pretty ornamental plant, but it has thrived in our ever dwindling natural spaces.
Goat heads, aka Tribulus terrestris. Seem mild enough at first, even nice with their nice ground cover and pretty yellow flowers, but then you get the burrs from which they get their colloquial name (the burrs kind of look like goat skulls from the right angle, with very thick pointy horns sticking up). Another colloquial name is caltrops, like the weapon.
It won’t kill you AFAIK, but it isn’t particularly nutritious either.
Blackberry. I don’t care for them, but plenty of people do. If you leave a vine unchecked you will have plenty of them to pick before too long, assuming you don’t bleed to death from getting mauled by the thorns.
The one I’ve noticed the most is Bird Vetch, which has spread along the road system. I don’t know how damaging it is, but you see it almost everywhere to some degree or another.
Blackberry bushes. They literally line our property – free fencing, keeps people out because who wants to deal with those thorns? Gives the humming birds a place for their nests without worry about predators from above, gives the bunny’s a place to run and hide and slows down the coyote’s just enough sometimes to let the little critters get away. I pick every year and typically end up with 5 1 gallon freezer bags full of them. I will clean and freeze most of them to use over the winter. I usually make jams, syrups, muffins, crisps, bagels and a sweet bread with them along with just eating them straight up.
ETA – I thought sure I’d see lots of other mentions of this! I have some of the other weeds but none are as invasive and impossible to eradicate as this reed.
Giant Hogweed or Wild Parsnip for me, it’s too cold for kudzu here.
Grows 20 feet tall, grows extremely fast, has a huge, deep root system that you have to completely kill in order to kill the plant, and spreads like crazy.
Oh and did I mention that its sap is corrosive, and can cause chemical burns and permanent scarring if it gets on you?
It’s also drought resistant and can’t be killed by most herbicides.
I just learned that a few of the family’s heirloom plants are now illegal to plant in my state without a permit. Luckily, I planted mine before they were made illegal.
Apperantly, Japanese Honeysuckle and Goosneck Loostrife are extremely invasive. I’m pretty sure my gooseneck crossbred with my butterfly bush, making them extra invasive….
Russian olive. 2 inch thorns made of titanium apparently. Cows and horses like the plant and the thorn will blind them. Not a problem for the cow, but devastating for a horse owner.
English ivy and honeysuckle. So far this spring I have removed about thirty five 38gal bags of this crap. It makes me wish to do violence against the nearby garden centers selling this crap. It climbs all of the buildings, all of the trees, and has spread to cover about 1000 sq ft of my yard. This is my mission in retirement since last year. Destroy every bit of it without herbicide.
Brazilian pepper. My friends and I used to go pepper busting, that’s what we call the process of getting rid of the thing. For reference this is in Central Florida.
I’ve got Japanese stiltgrass (no idea) and English ivy (not edible) from previous home owners. I have kudzu, too, but my chickens and rabbits will defoliate that pretty regularly.
Giant Hogweed. A weed that has a sap that can cause horrible blisters on you if you get it on you. You’re required to call the state agriculture board if you find it growing. Nasty shit
We have something called “bindweed” that coils itself around all the plants and will choke them out if you don’t pull it. I hate it. If you don’t get every little scrap of root, it comes back. I also have some kind of creeping buttercup that is almost impossible to pull out. You pull it, and it just comes right back.
Japanese knotweed or Japanese barberry. Knotweed is harder to kill but barberry hurts you. Knotweed is edible, barberry idk maybe the leaves are but that would be absurd to go through to get them off.
Edit: oh or that japanese honeysuckle thing, that vine… Or creeping Charlie and mock strawberry. Battling all of the above in the yard and it’s going well for some and terribly for others.
CT doesn’t have as many of the really bad ones, it’s usually cold enough in the winter to kill them. But Japanese knotweed and oriental bittersweet are problems. And there’s occasional Trees of Heaven as well, which bring spotted lanternfly problems.
Palm trees. People love them, but they don’t belong here and are useless. Live oaks provide actual shade. Palms just turn brown and ugly while providing nothing.
Knotweed. Forms a monoculture, spreads on a highly aggressive rhizome, and can sprout from a cutting of any part of the plant, so it can be spread by, among other things, lawnmowers.
Garlic mustard. There are others, like buckthorn and honeysuckle, but garlic mustard is the one I’ve dealt with. When my kids were cub scouts, we took the whole pack and spent a day yanking it out of a park.
I don’t know what it was. It was some kind of fast growing vine like thing (I’m in MN). I remember helping my BF at the tome with yard work. This vine was rapidly growing into his yard from over a fence. We went to the back where it was with pruning shears. It was a calm, sunny, wind free day. As I approached with the shears, shit you not, that vine recoiled back a few inches. I looked at my BF and said no way am I cutting that. I have no idea what it was, and since I noped out that portion of the yard, i dont know if it was even pruned. All I know is that it never came back.
Hemlock (not edible), tansy ragwort (not edible), scotch broom (not edible), thistle (edible), dandelion (edible, and you can make a honey-like jam out of it), bamboo (edible if prepared correctly), blackberries (edible, but horrible to deal with), mint (edible, will quickly try to take over wherever it’s been planted).
Phrag. Or Phragmites australis. Impossible to kill. 12 feet talk. Deep roots. Grows on anything. Runners that can cross roads. Grows through 4 inches of asphalt.
Buckthorn, once you have it, you have it for life. I can’t kill it without killing everything. I’ve even tried the solutions I’ve found on-line and no luck. Nowi I have excellent yard shears and put rock music on and go to town every couple weeks in the summer.
Mile-a-Minute. I hate that shit. It took over my mom’s farm in less than a year. You couldn’t cut it fast enough and those obnoxious little thorns got into your clothes and hair. Once it got into a few 30′ or 40′ trees, it was all over but the crying.
Buffelgrass, it’s invasive to the Sonoran Desert. There’s not much that will burn in the desert, so the cacti aren’t used to fires. Buffelgrass is great fuel so it’ll burn and the fire will kill the Saguaro cacti, which are 100’s of years old.
Tribulus terrestris
We call them Goatheads. They leave these sharp thorn things that sting if you step on one and some are large enough to put a hole in a bicycle tire.
Comments
Cybertrucks, more of them seem to crop up every day
In my opinion, ailanthus. And no. But I have a Cadbury creme egg you can have.
Foxtails, which, I’m sorry to say, are not edible. They help keep food on veterinarians’ tables, though.
Ivy. It’s killing all the trees, and I don’t think I’d wanna eat it
My dumb neighbor planted wisteria, then stopped taking care of it, and has since moved. Sons of bitches…
English ivy first, then (at least in my neighborhood) Himalayan blackberries
To me, the most delicious yet brutally invasive weed is Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica).
Pray it never crops up, but if it does, it’s a restaurant-quality vegetable. Young sprouts cooked like asparagus, tender tops blanched.
Ugh, Trumpet Vine.
Goatheads. Aka puncture vine, aka fuck your shit up.
Edit – Tribulus terrestris
Kudzu. It’s apparently edible, but ive never had it.
Wild blackberries in western Oregon and Washington. The berries are edible.
Kudzu
In South Florida, we have so many. Brazilian Peper (Schinus terebinthifolia) is a big on. Pretty ornamental plant, but it has thrived in our ever dwindling natural spaces.
Tree of heaven. Unfortunately no.
Kudzu. The weed that ate the south.
You can eat it if you wanted to. I don’t know anyone who wants to.
Goat heads, aka Tribulus terrestris. Seem mild enough at first, even nice with their nice ground cover and pretty yellow flowers, but then you get the burrs from which they get their colloquial name (the burrs kind of look like goat skulls from the right angle, with very thick pointy horns sticking up). Another colloquial name is caltrops, like the weapon.
It won’t kill you AFAIK, but it isn’t particularly nutritious either.
fucking blackberries
Kudzu.
Kudzu has destroyed tens of thousands of acres of forest in my area.
Kudzu, my friend. I think it’s edible cuz the goats eat it. Also on our shit list is jap grass, English Ivey, black cherry trees and mimosa trees.
Bindweed. Definitely not edible.
Scotchbroom
Then Morning Glory (field bind weed). Makes a mockery of English Ivy or Bamboo.
Fortunately no Kudzu around here (PNW) so only know it from reputation.
Kudzu. It’s so beautiful but definitely invasive.
Kudzu and Crabgrass
Poison ivy
Blackberry. It should be the Oregon State Weed.
Buckthorn.
Bamboo. Someone planted it in our area and it’s slowly taking over
Very close race among Mile-a-Minute weed (Asiatic tearthumb), Virginia Creeper, and Lesser Celandine.
Cedar trees
Bamboo. It’s the worst.
Poison Ivy
Brazilian Peppertree
Water chestnut. Brazilian elodea. Hornwort.
Blackberry. I don’t care for them, but plenty of people do. If you leave a vine unchecked you will have plenty of them to pick before too long, assuming you don’t bleed to death from getting mauled by the thorns.
Japanese Knotweed
That shit was spread by someone who was impressed that it survived a nuclear meltdown. Not okay.
Waterhemp
Common buckthorn. No, you don’t wanna be eating it
Bamboo, and yes, if you’re a panda
Oriental bittersweet. It kills trees.
Garlic Mustard is annoying, too. We have Japanese knotweed in the area, but none near me.
Mountain blackberries. They will take over everything.
Not really a weed I guess but Water hyacinth in Louisiana. I hate it, it clogs up the bayous and canals and is very difficult to get rid of.
Wild mustard
Wild: trumpet vine, honeysuckle, and blackberry. Planted: Virginia creeper and St. John’s wort quickly get out of control.
The one I’ve noticed the most is Bird Vetch, which has spread along the road system. I don’t know how damaging it is, but you see it almost everywhere to some degree or another.
Creeping nightshade! It is on my property and I can’t get rid of the stuff!!
Bamboo, can’t get rid of it
Goat heads. Hands down. All the rest suck, but goat heads are the worst. Will go right through cheap flip flops. Dogs paws. Everything
Canadian thistle…. it’s pickers suck and it just keeps coming and coming
Burdock or jimsonweed
Himalayan Blackberries. They’re thorny and take over everything, but they are very tasty.
Musk Thistle
Yes it is great for you, but beware the prickly bits
Wineberry for my yard personally.
Himalayan blackberry.
Canada Thistle and Buckthorn
People have already mentioned blackberries, so eucalyptus. That shit is dangerous.
In my yard, crabgrass. I believe it is edible.
Himalayan blackberries. They grow everywhere in the Seattle metro.
Honeysuckle, kills all forest understory plants.
Blackberry bushes. They literally line our property – free fencing, keeps people out because who wants to deal with those thorns? Gives the humming birds a place for their nests without worry about predators from above, gives the bunny’s a place to run and hide and slows down the coyote’s just enough sometimes to let the little critters get away. I pick every year and typically end up with 5 1 gallon freezer bags full of them. I will clean and freeze most of them to use over the winter. I usually make jams, syrups, muffins, crisps, bagels and a sweet bread with them along with just eating them straight up.
Kudzu and the competition isn’t even close. I’ve heard it’s edible but I have never tried it
Himalayan Blackberry.
Kudzu. Used to cover the streets down the road until an eradication effort. I guess they got it all.
Now we have invasive trees that the parks are eradicating even with volunteers. I’ve participated.
Bird vetch. The only upside is it’s an annual in this climate and very shallow-rooted.
Idk about invasive but Blackberries are the worst plant/weed. They grow like crazy and kill anything around them.
Himalayan Blackberries, and yeah they taste good. Especially the ones on the riverbank.
Russian Thisle aka Tumble weeds they are EVERYWHERE
Himalaya blackberry.
Bradford pear.
Himalayan blackberries
Japanese Knotweed or Asian Honeysuckle.
Kudzu
Kudzu by a lot.
Phragmites
So far as I know it’s not edible.
ETA – I thought sure I’d see lots of other mentions of this! I have some of the other weeds but none are as invasive and impossible to eradicate as this reed.
Oriental bittersweet. I’ve been battling that shit for years.
Tumbleweed. It’s not edible, and that cr@p gets everywhere.
Japanese barberry or mustard garlic
Giant Hogweed or Wild Parsnip for me, it’s too cold for kudzu here.
Grows 20 feet tall, grows extremely fast, has a huge, deep root system that you have to completely kill in order to kill the plant, and spreads like crazy.
Oh and did I mention that its sap is corrosive, and can cause chemical burns and permanent scarring if it gets on you?
It’s also drought resistant and can’t be killed by most herbicides.
Fun stuff!
Bloody trees of heaven, and they bring their stupid fucking legions of tree draining spotted lanternflies along with them.
SO hard to get rid of them. I’ve been fighting back the one in my yard for three years. Springs up all happy and content in the spring every time.
I just learned that a few of the family’s heirloom plants are now illegal to plant in my state without a permit. Luckily, I planted mine before they were made illegal.
Apperantly, Japanese Honeysuckle and Goosneck Loostrife are extremely invasive. I’m pretty sure my gooseneck crossbred with my butterfly bush, making them extra invasive….
buckthorn
Garlic mustard. (yes, it’s edible) Multiflora rose. (yes.)
Gotta be tumbleweeds, the amount of times they have blocked me leaving my house is absolutely disgusting.
Mela!uca, dropped seeds from aeroplanes to dry up the everglades. What could go wrong?
Apparently here it’s those pear trees that smell. Cities are offering incentives if you cut them down.
I feel like I pulled up miles of peppervine roots out of such a small yard. People seem to disagree on how edible it is.
Russian olive. 2 inch thorns made of titanium apparently. Cows and horses like the plant and the thorn will blind them. Not a problem for the cow, but devastating for a horse owner.
Tatarian Honeysuckle – not edible
Garlic Mustard – edible
Buckthorn – not edible
Haven’t seen zebra mussels or sea lamprey mentioned yet. Wreaking havoc on the Great Lakes.
English ivy
Clover.
Spurge. It’s horrible
Asiatic tearthumb
Autumn Olive. Google says the berries are edible, apparently.
We had a buckthorn removed from the middle of a lilac bush last summer.
English ivy and honeysuckle. So far this spring I have removed about thirty five 38gal bags of this crap. It makes me wish to do violence against the nearby garden centers selling this crap. It climbs all of the buildings, all of the trees, and has spread to cover about 1000 sq ft of my yard. This is my mission in retirement since last year. Destroy every bit of it without herbicide.
Kudzu but I’m not gonna lie I was about to answer “anything but Sativa” before I finished reading your post 😂
Brazilian pepper. My friends and I used to go pepper busting, that’s what we call the process of getting rid of the thing. For reference this is in Central Florida.
Wild blackberry
Virginia creeper, it’s trying to take over my garden area.
Some sort of blackberry bramble. It growls like a sharp unstoppable shambling mound.
Black berry bushes
Kudzu
I eat the dandelion flowers when I see them in my neighborhood. Purslane also grows and it’s good but I haven’t seen it in my neighborhood.
https://wildmontana.org/2023/06/29/community/how-to-harvest-and-eat-the-common-dandelion/
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/purslane#TOC_TITLE_HDR_5
I’ve got Japanese stiltgrass (no idea) and English ivy (not edible) from previous home owners. I have kudzu, too, but my chickens and rabbits will defoliate that pretty regularly.
Morning glory is pretty damn annoying.
Thistles, especially bull and Canadian thistles.
I hate those little stickers. They are sharp and hurt. My cat gets them in his fur sometimes. And they are hard to kill.
English ivy. My neighbors is constantly creeping into my yard
English ivy
Well it was the zebra mussells, but now they kind of belong?
Giant Hogweed. A weed that has a sap that can cause horrible blisters on you if you get it on you. You’re required to call the state agriculture board if you find it growing. Nasty shit
Alder Buckthorn and Japanese Knotweed. Supposedly the latter is edible.
CHEATGRASS. It covers native plants and causes wildfires, destroying sage and everything else.
In my garden, alfalfa is a pain because it’s hard to dig out if it gets too big.
Bamboo is the destroyer of worlds. Yeah it’s cute, but like an STD, it’s hard to treat, and it can come back.
We have something called “bindweed” that coils itself around all the plants and will choke them out if you don’t pull it. I hate it. If you don’t get every little scrap of root, it comes back. I also have some kind of creeping buttercup that is almost impossible to pull out. You pull it, and it just comes right back.
Honeysuckle
Bindweed. Miserable stuff
Japanese knotweed or Japanese barberry. Knotweed is harder to kill but barberry hurts you. Knotweed is edible, barberry idk maybe the leaves are but that would be absurd to go through to get them off.
Edit: oh or that japanese honeysuckle thing, that vine… Or creeping Charlie and mock strawberry. Battling all of the above in the yard and it’s going well for some and terribly for others.
I’m in the NE. Japanese Honeysuckle. It’s fucking everywhere. If you see any sort of overgrown area off the side of the road it’s honeysuckle.
Blackberries bushes. They are horrible.
Bittersweet in New England
Bamboo when we lived in California
Chinese wisteria. It’s a nightmare.
Mint. It just roots itself everywhere. When I lived in the US it was scotchbroom. Fuck that shit.
English Ivy. That shit is impossible to control.
Tree of heaven
Dandelions all over my back yard. They’re pretty tasty when they’re young.
Multiflora rose
Things take over wherever they grow and have these thin thorns that will go right through your clothing matter how many layers you have on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galium_aparine
Fuck this stuff, regrows from fire and glyphosate.
Honorable mention is sumac, shit shrugged off double strength glyphosate.
Tree of heaven. Apparently sort of edible? Who knew?
Black mustard on all the undeveloped hillsides. Edible.
CT doesn’t have as many of the really bad ones, it’s usually cold enough in the winter to kill them. But Japanese knotweed and oriental bittersweet are problems. And there’s occasional Trees of Heaven as well, which bring spotted lanternfly problems.
Lesser celadine. It’s an absolute menace.
Blackberry
Palm trees. People love them, but they don’t belong here and are useless. Live oaks provide actual shade. Palms just turn brown and ugly while providing nothing.
Knotweed. Forms a monoculture, spreads on a highly aggressive rhizome, and can sprout from a cutting of any part of the plant, so it can be spread by, among other things, lawnmowers.
Star thistle and foxtail. They are both horrible.
Immediately locally, yellow thistle
Cheatgrass a little bit more larger regionally for wildfire risk.
Kudzu is supposedly the worst nationwide.
But I’d like to add a nomination for tumbleweed, if only for the entertaining CGP Grey video on why it’s awful.
Out of state transplants.
NW trifecta: poison oak, Himalayan blackberry and ivy all at once
Garlic mustard. There are others, like buckthorn and honeysuckle, but garlic mustard is the one I’ve dealt with. When my kids were cub scouts, we took the whole pack and spent a day yanking it out of a park.
Thistle and Poison Ivy, Oak, and Sumac.
Kudzu. It’s everywhere down here. I’ve heard about people making Kudzu jelly.
I don’t know what it was. It was some kind of fast growing vine like thing (I’m in MN). I remember helping my BF at the tome with yard work. This vine was rapidly growing into his yard from over a fence. We went to the back where it was with pruning shears. It was a calm, sunny, wind free day. As I approached with the shears, shit you not, that vine recoiled back a few inches. I looked at my BF and said no way am I cutting that. I have no idea what it was, and since I noped out that portion of the yard, i dont know if it was even pruned. All I know is that it never came back.
Dallis grass
Hemlock (not edible), tansy ragwort (not edible), scotch broom (not edible), thistle (edible), dandelion (edible, and you can make a honey-like jam out of it), bamboo (edible if prepared correctly), blackberries (edible, but horrible to deal with), mint (edible, will quickly try to take over wherever it’s been planted).
Kudzu sucks, especially because it looks extra ugly after all the leaves die and it’s just brown vines all over everything
But when it comes to invasive plants I’m pretty sure Bradford Pears take the cake
Phrag. Or Phragmites australis. Impossible to kill. 12 feet talk. Deep roots. Grows on anything. Runners that can cross roads. Grows through 4 inches of asphalt.
Idk if it’s the worst, but i really hate crab grass.
Buckthorn, once you have it, you have it for life. I can’t kill it without killing everything. I’ve even tried the solutions I’ve found on-line and no luck. Nowi I have excellent yard shears and put rock music on and go to town every couple weeks in the summer.
Bamboo.
Creeping Charlie, and Japanese Beetles (yes I know that’s not a weed but it’s the biggest pest in my area.)
Mile-a-Minute. I hate that shit. It took over my mom’s farm in less than a year. You couldn’t cut it fast enough and those obnoxious little thorns got into your clothes and hair. Once it got into a few 30′ or 40′ trees, it was all over but the crying.
Buffelgrass, it’s invasive to the Sonoran Desert. There’s not much that will burn in the desert, so the cacti aren’t used to fires. Buffelgrass is great fuel so it’ll burn and the fire will kill the Saguaro cacti, which are 100’s of years old.
Eurasian milfoil
Blackberries if you have to work amongst them. They are fucking delicious though
Kudzu
Tribulus terrestris
We call them Goatheads. They leave these sharp thorn things that sting if you step on one and some are large enough to put a hole in a bicycle tire.
Himalayan Blackberries..Thanks Luther Burbank!
Morning Glory.
Bindweed, and the deer think so.
Christmas berry
Ligustrum aka PRIVET 😤
Not edible unfortunately
Mint. If you have it, you have it forever.
I find the existence of tarweed to be a personal offense.
https://morningchores.com/edible-weeds/
My backyard if full of wild violets. Those are edible.