#also wineberries i know they are so fucking invasive but they are also so fucking deeeeelicious

[weedlovingweed]

i'm so silly in that as soon as the plants start budding again im like ALMOST MULBERRY SEASON!!! and then i am disappointed for like 2-3 months

[blackbearmagic]

Hope this isn't too intrusive of a question but what sort of ideas/themes do you use/draw from/ put into your invasive species animism? What's it "about", I mean?

Not at all! I love talking about invasivecraft!!

I got into working with invasives because I just never felt a connection to the more traditional herbs, like rosemary and basil. Everyone always uses them, and they just... never seemed to hold any power for me. The few times I tried using them, it felt like a purely performative act. Like I was just doing it because I was being told to. It didn’t feel magical at all.

But invasives... oof. Invasives were something else.

Maybe it was because I knew them better than I knew the traditional herbs. Several invasive plant species have taken over the region I grew up in, and were more familiar to me than native species. As a child, they were beloved plants. I grew up surrounded by their energy and gave them my own, meaningful names.

I called garlic mustard “Julieweed”, because I spent many long hours romping through the waist- or even sometimes shoulder-high stalks of it with my childhood best friend, Julie. I called Japanese stiltgrass “bamboo grass”, because its knobbed stems and blade-shaped leaves reminded me of bamboo. Mile-a-minute was “cat-claw ivy”, because it had ivy-like leaves studded with thorns that would snag you like a cat’s paw. Wineberry was simply called “thornybush”, mostly because I’d never seen it bear fruit.

Needless to say, I was always devastated at first to learn that these beloved, familiar plants were “bad”, but as I started getting into witchcraft, I realized that they probably had great potential. For curses and banework, certainly--but also for blessing and empowerment. 

Invasives tend to take over the places they’re introduced to. They are conquerers. Not out of any malicious intent, mind you--at least, not the same malicious intent that a human might have. They’re just there trying to grow their leaves, put out their seeds, and continue their, uh, sapline. If that means displacing other plants, so be it. If that means destroying an ecosystem, so be it. If that means taking over the soil and driving out the competition, so fucking be it. They’re raw. They’re powerful. They have tools at their disposal that the native plants and animals and fungi aren’t adapted to stand against, and they use them.

In invasive species, I’ve found a power, an energy, a potential, an attitude, that I felt simple garden herbs lacked. 

In the new world they’ve been brought to, there is nothing--no predator, no herbivore, no fungus--that can stand in their way. Most of them know it. Garlic Mustard, for example, is an incredibly smug, powerful plant. It destroys the mycorrhyzal fungi wherever it sets down its roots, making it hard for other plants to grow. Deer and other herbivores avoid it, instead clearing away native foliage and unwittingly making room for more garlic mustard plants. Once it gets even the slightest hold in a new area, that’s it--the whole forest floor will be garlic mustard in a few years. 

It knows that it’s restructuring entire ecosystems, and it’s proud--because that is just a side-effect of it being a successful plant. It’s doing plant things, and doing them very well. It sees nothing wrong with wiping out the competition and putting forth its own, invasive progeny. It’s just being a plant, and it’s winning at that.

So when I work invasivecraft, I draw on that power, that smugness, that raw determination to succeed at all costs. With garlic mustard, you can push out your “competition”--whether that’s an ex who’s wronged you, a coworker who’s annoying you, or even your own laziness and fearfulness. Anything that is holding you down, Garlic Mustard can overgrow; it can poison your soils and make them unfit for anything that you don’t want growing there. It can be bitter and unpalatable, and impossible for someone else to clear out. And even if they manage to clear out all the “plants”, they’ll be fighting the “seeds” it left behind for years to come. 

(Hands down, Garlic Mustard is my favorite invasive “herb” to work with. If you couldn’t tell.)

When I used to use herbs like sage and basil in spells, it didn’t feel like anything happened. The first time I used garlic mustard as a spell herb, it felt like a fog had cleared and a storm had passed. It felt right. It felt real and powerful. It felt magical. 

When I learn about a new herb, I prefer to go straight to the source. I’ll usually dedicate some time to eradicating the plants from a certain area, and as I pull them like common weeds, I try to connect to the spirit of the species. (So far, every invasive I’ve worked with hasn’t been the least bit bothered by this--they know my pulling won’t do jack shit to their population numbers.) I’ll try and get a sense for what the species-spirit is like--smug like Garlic Mustard, cheerful like Chickweed. They’re always very up-front with me.

I’ll also do some scientific research on the plant in question. I’ll look into how it came to be here, how it grows, and how it disrupts the ecosystems it takes over. From there, I’ll try to look at those scientific facts in a metaphysical way. For example, garlic mustard (the plant) makes the soil it grows in unfit for most plants in North America, so I ask Garlic Mustard (the species-spirit) if it could reasonably have power over removing blockages or protection. (It does.) Make sense? 

Basically, invasivecraft as I do it is a weird marriage of science and woo-woo.

Of course, the deeper I get into it, the less comfortable I am recommending it as a path for just anyone. Invasives are really... not easily controlled. They aren’t cultivated and domesticated like your common garden herb; they’ll work with humans, but they won’t be ordered about by us. If given the opportunity, they will take things too far, because they are wild and competitive and they make their way by exploiting every advantage they have. 

I’ve never had it happen to me personally, and I think that has less to do with my personal fortitude and more with the fact that I’ve taken the time to understand how these plants work. It’s slightly hard for them to get out of my hand, because I know exactly how they would do it and can prepare accordingly.

If you (or anyone else) wants to try working invasivecraft, but aren’t sure you can safely handle the wilder energy, I’d suggest looking into the more “domesticated” species. 

English Ivy, I’ve found to be very gentle and easy to work with; it’s a very agreeable little plant who, I find, doesn’t usually mean to cause destruction with its overgrowth--it just wants to climb and grow, and any collapsed trees and broken branches are just... unfortunate. Vinca Major (also known as periwinkle) is also rather sweet and grows well in low-light situations. You’ve probably also got Chickweed for days if you’re in North America, and that one is also a very mild, sweet spirit--almost a little playful, even.

Many ornamental garden plants would also be a good starter--they’re usually pretty cultivated and amenable to people working with them, but if allowed to escape their garden beds, they can cause havoc on an ecosystem. Find a nice garden plant that speaks to you, then google its name and “invasive” to see if and how and where it’s caused trouble, because I guarantee most of them have.

I could talk about invasivecraft for days, but I feel like I’ve answered your question and then some. If you want to know more, please don’t hesitate to shoot me a message!!