Edit: The weed lobby is alive and well in the comments! Just kidding. Appreciate the responses.
But my question still sort of stands. Take away the pejorative label “weed”—what allows these plants to perform better than the other ones?
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Besides the other things that have been mentioned:
Some plants are really good at recovering from being cut or torn out, because they can regrow from small chunks of plant tissue that are left behind. This means that if you try to remove them from your garden, they will often just grow right back.
Where I live, we had invasive *Oxalis pes-caprae*, a South African relative of the local redwood sorrel *Oxalis oregana*.¹ One difference between the two is that the invasive “weed” species grows little pea-sized bulbs off of its roots. If you tear the plant out, you’ll usually leave these bulbs behind, and it will just regrow from them. Also, it can spread from place to place if you move soil that contains the bulbs.
Similarly, bamboo and many other grasses can regrow from their *rhizomes,* underground tissues that can send up new shoots. Getting rid of unwanted bamboo plants can be really hard. And since they’re so tough, some bamboos can tunnel under sidewalks and grow up through cracks, tearing the sidewalk up.
Why do plants come up with adaptations like that? It’s not actually to frustrate gardeners! It’s to survive grazing animals, wildfires, or other things that destroy most of the plant.
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¹ For West Coast gardening nerds: You can tell the difference between native *O. oregana* and invasive *O. pes-caprae* by the color of the flowers; *oregana* is white with a hint of pink, whereas *pes-caprae* is vivid yellow. The native one doesn’t do bulbs, but it has its own tricks; when its seeds become ripe, the seed-pods pop and shoot them out! The native one does *not* want full sun; it prospers in the shade of redwoods. Both of them are edible!
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