A Weed that Goes a Long Way

Today I learned that the pollen from ragweed can travel up to 400 miles on the wind. 400 miles!

Do you know what ragweed flowers look like? I think it's pretty unlikely, since even many experienced gardeners tend to not know, in my experience.

And many people think goldenrod is ragweed and/or they think they are allergic to goldenrod, even if they know goldenrod is goldenrod and not ragweed. Because goldenrod is colorful and noticeable and blooms at the same time as ragweed, and ragweed has boring flowers that don't look like flowers to humans.


Common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisifolia). Ironically, when I did an image search for the word ragweed, about two-thirds of the images were pictures of...goldenrod.

Here's another way that common ragweed differs from goldenrod: the former is a true annual while the latter is a perennial. One thing they have in common is that both are native to North America.

(By the way, did you know it's is very easy to misspell ragweed as rageweed? That seems appropriate.)