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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My botany professor said a weed is any plant growing where a human being doesn’t it want to grow.
Late to the party here, but I think this wasn’t touched on.
Plants that are taken from their normal environments into a new one sometimes become invasive weeds, because they suddenly have no competition and no predators. With no restrictions, all the effort they put into merely keeping up, goes straight into new growth and next thing you know, they are frickin everywhere. They aren’t doing anything differently, they just aren’t having 90% of their growth immediately destroyed by other plants, animals, diseases, weather etc.
They pick something where they are competitive. eg: they grow very flat and close to the ground and are so dense that other plants don’t have a chance to sprout. Any part of their roots will grow into another plant. They grow tall quickly amongst short stature plants or plants that grow slowly. They are not pleasant to eat for plant-eating animals, so the “good”, good-tasting plants get eaten. They have roots that exude something noxious that discourages growth of other plants. They tolerate an uncomfortable environmental situation where other plants do not (some plants can grow in highly salty soil).
No such thing as a weed, that is a generalization. There is no answer because the question is broken.
It isn’t necessarily a specific thing they do; it is simply the fact that they do grow quickly (and spread their seed widely) that makes them “weeds”. So two possible, and related, definitions of “weed” would be:
1) a plant which was not intentionally planted but grows in the same place plants which were do
2) plants which are very efficient at sprouting
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