Illustrations of the Weeds of Coldwater Farm

All invasive plants are weeds but not all weeds are invasive.

In fact, a great majority of weeds aren’t invasive. Most are native plants that respond to natural and human-made disasters by covering and protecting exposed soil. They do not invade native vegetation by spreading among the longer-lived, shade-casting plants that make up what we call climax vegetation. Here are illustrations of the 153 weed species observed or expected to appear at Coldwater Farm. Click images to see weed names and image creators. If there is no name or creator given, or if you want information on a weed’s characteristics including its value as medicine and food, refer to the book Weeds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona available from Amazon.

Drawings, Paintings, and Photographs

Plant identification is easier with drawings made by an experienced botanical illustrator than with photographs. In photographs, important features aren’t always distinct on a particular leaf or flower. An illustrator can emphasize the appropriate features. Photographs are useful for showing plant colors and typical settings with other plants.

For each weed, I tried to present the best illustrations available. Many of the drawings are by Lucretia Breazeale Hamilton from the book An Illustrated Guide to Arizona Weeds by Kittie Parker published in 1972. In the gallery, they are usually identified as “Parker”. They are included with the generous permission of the University of Arizona Press. Most of the photographs have Creative-Commons licenses that allow reproduction only requiring attribution to the photographer (CC BY 2-4 and BY-SA 2-4). I did not alter the photographs except as needed to fit them on the page and make them suitable for printing. Some of the drawings and photographs are from U. S. government web sites and are in the public domain. Paintings were available for some of the weeds. The ones I used are over 100 years old and are in the public domain. For all images, Weeds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona has the names of creators in the captions and in an Index of Illustrators, Painters, and Photographers just before the General Index.

You can find more works by the photographers by entering their names or the names of the plants they depicted in the search box at Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, or Flickr Creative Commons. “GR” in a caption identifies photos by me. You can use my photos as long as you attribute them as “© Garry Rogers.” Look up Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 to read the license requirements.