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Concepts, categories and characteristics of weeds

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Biology and ecology of weeds

Part of the book series: Geobotany ((GEOB,volume 2))

Abstract

‘Weed problems arise when a plant species or a group of species interfere with man’s activities, his health or his pleasures’ (Fryer 1979). The term ‘weed’ is not a scientific one but ‘public property’ and the ‘public as a whole has a very broad concept of ‘what a weed is’” (Wells 1978). Not only plants that are a nuisance for some reason, but simply most plants that are ‘unsightly’ or just good for nothing are considered as undesirable and thus classified as ‘weeds’. Different people will have different conceptions of weediness and it is as difficult to define the term ‘weed’ to a scientist as it is to explain to a farmer why it should be necessary to define ‘weed’ at all. But a scientific book on weeds has — come what may — to begin with such a definition.

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Authors
  1. W. Holzner
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bot. Inst., Univ. f. Bodenkultur, Gregor Mendel-Str. 33, A-1180, Wien, Austria

    W. Holzner

  2. Lab. of Ecology, Chiba University, Yayoi-cho, Chiba, Japan

    M. Numata

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Holzner, W. (1982). Concepts, categories and characteristics of weeds. In: Holzner, W., Numata, M. (eds) Biology and ecology of weeds. Geobotany, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0916-3_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0916-3_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8519-1

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