WEEDS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS. 197 
speaking generally, as bearing a weedy look, whilst that of the lower 
coast region of most tropical countries could scarcely be better defined 
than by that phrase. One of the most essential characteristics of a 
weed is, therefore, that it should look weedy, or, in other words, that 
its stem and foliage should be neither too fleshy nor too leathery, but 
of a soft, flaccid, or membranaceous description. 
Another important characteristic is, that a herb, to be considered a 
weed, should propagate itself either by seeds or buds at a rapid rate, 
grow 7 fast, and overpower those plants which may check its progress. 
I take it to be, that this characteristic is emphatically conveyed in the 
etymology of the word " weed," which, through the Low German verb 
<« — i-.. >> 
wuen (to weed), the Bavarian "wiiteln" and the High German 
wuchem " (= to spread or multiply with more than ordinary rapidity), 
is connected with Wodan or Wuotan (=s Odin), the name of the su- 
preme, all-overpowering, irresistible Saxon god, to whom Wednesday, 
or Wodensday, is dedicated.* 
A third, and perhaps more important characteristic is, that a weed 
appears only on land which, either by cultivation or some other manner, 
nas been disturbed by man. Virgin lands, such as the tops of high 
mountains, have no weeds ; I saw none in the Arctic regions except 
Tttrapoma pyriforme, a Siberian immigrant, which was growing in 
Norton Sound, on the only cultivated patch I met with in that country. 
W eeds are therefore essentially intruders, colonists, foreigners, or whatever 
one likes to call them, — never endemic children of the soil. They may 
have come from the immediate neighbourhood, but they have always 
been translated, though the distances may have been but limited. Weeds 
we therefore to bear up against all the prejudice which the popular 
ttind in all countries invariably entertains against foreigners. The 
German contemptuously calls weed " Unkraut" which is the antithesis 
of Kraut (= herb), and means " no herb,'' or "strange herb;' just as 
■*% (= thing) is the antithesis of Unding (= strange thing or 
monster) ; thus clearly expressing that weeds do not belong to the 
herbs of the country, but are something strange, unrecognized. Some- 
This view, I find, is borne out by Jacob Grimm, ' Deutsche Mythologies 
2nd edit. vol. i. chap. vii. Singularly enough, the High German form for " to 
wee d" is lost, and replaced by the word "jaten," pronounced «0*tm n in 
■proe districts. I wm very muc h puzzled about the derivation of this word, 
1,11 1 remembered that " Gbrt " was one of the names o( the god "Wuotan" 
