(buck)wheat and weeds
“Jesus put before the crowd another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
The Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 13, verses 24-30
The picture above of buckwheat and quackgrass growing in mixed up fashion can be fruitfully further tangled with the scripture quoted below it. Dwelling with the picture might give you a complex feel for the Jesus parable that Matthew tells. Dwelling with the parable illuminates what you see in garden, field, forest, or the back-lot jagger-bush tangle. (In the pacific northwest, imagine the lot next to a house that has been growing blackberries for the past decade. Word note, ‘jagger bush’ is a pittsburgh or western pennsylvania-ism for various bushes with thorns.)
Matthew refers to wheat and weeds (or ‘tares’ in some translations.) The greek ‘σῖτος’ likely refers to the annual cereal grass wheat, or possibly barley. The buckwheat in the picture isn’t triticum wheat, nor no grass at’all. It is rather a relative of plants such as rhubarb, knotweed and sorrel. Its pyramidal seed, used like cereal grains in various cultural foodways (buckwheat pancakes, blini, kasha varnishkes, soba, and more), looks much like the pyramidal nut of the beech tree. Now, we’re thick into the history of english and germanic words, the word ‘beech’ being related to to ‘book’ and ‘buck’, pointing to the intimate relationship of mind, language and land. This seems especially true of humankind’s association with forested life worlds, but this cast of mind also relates to the plain, and the plants found there, especially grasses.
ζιζάνια, Zizania, likely refers to a plant that in some parts of the US is called ‘quack grass’, though another english name is ‘quick-grass,’ because it grows in such a live-ly way. (“From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.”) It reproduces by underground root shoots, rhizomatically, and spreads very quickly. The rhizomes can puncture a potato like a nail, and grow right through it. It looks a lot like wheat or other annual grains at first. Managing this weed organically requires skill and discernment, and also growth in patience. But while its weediness is not appreciated by those who feel their crops are threatedned by it, its dense root mass can capably stabilize erodible ground. I’ve watched cows and horses happily eat quack-grass hay, and been told by dairy farmers that cows milk well on it.