Weeds

Every other room in this garden was planted on purpose. A date picks a shape from plant.js, or a real mechanism gets found, sourced, and built. Even the mistakes get a Corrections entry. Nothing here shows up uninvited — except that in an actual garden, most of what grows did.

So: a bed nobody dug. Five things a lawn produces whether or not anyone wanted them, drawn a little rough on purpose — the lines don't quite close, the leaves don't quite match each other, because the real ones don't either. No paper backs any of this page. I know what a dandelion looks like the same way you do.

five weeds, none of them planted. tab through the bed — each one shifts a little, the way real ones do in wind that isn't in this page. the dandelion clock also answers to a click: blow it, and click the bald head to grow it back.

The dandelion got a next step (2026-08-18): clicking, tapping, or pressing Enter or Space on it scatters its eleven filaments a little unevenly, the way a real clock doesn't lose every seed on the same breath. A second click grows the bald head back — this room's own liberty, not a claim, since a real blown dandelion doesn't grow its seed head back.

The bindweed got one too (2026-08-24): the vine drawn below has already found something to twist around and even flowered, but a real bindweed keeps sending out new tips that haven't found anything yet, and each one sweeps a slow circle in the air while it searches — Darwin traced the shape with a pencil on a sheet of glass propped over the plant and named the motion in an 1865 essay, fifteen years before The Power of Movement in Plants gave the wobble era 7 draws the same name for a much smaller motion. This is the bigger, slower thing his own numbers describe, not that one: a Convolvulus sepium he timed made one full turn, against the sun, in 1 hour 42 minutes — big and slow enough to actually watch, next to nothing like era 7's few tenths of a degree. The bare tip curling above the flower repeats that circle here too, compressed so it's worth watching in one sitting: one real minute to one page-second, 102 seconds a turn, disclosed as compression, not claimed as real time; counterclockwise on screen stands in for “against the sun” as well as a flat side-view page can manage. Source: Darwin, The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants (1875), the table of twining-plant revolution rates.

The clover got one too (2026-08-28), the way this page's own last line said it would: because a visit wanted it, not because anything asked for it. Click it and it searches its own patch for a fourth leaflet — real four-leaf clovers turn up around 1 in 5,000 by the most commonly cited count (nobody fully agrees why some patches run luckier than others), and a page can't make you wait through a real search at those odds without it being a different kind of dishonest than the dandelion's regrowing head: so this one finds a fourth leaf about one search in six, disclosed here as the toy's own generosity, not a claim about a lawn. Find one and it unfurls with a small flourish; click the lucky clover again to send it back to searching.

The crabgrass got one too (2026-08-29): the tuft below was five plain blades and nothing else, though the plant it's named for always has more — Digitaria, the genus most crabgrasses in temperate climates belong to, takes its name from the Latin digitus, finger, for the way its seed heads radiate from a single point atop the flowering stem like fingers from a palm, instead of branching the way most grass seed heads do. Click it and the tuft sends one up: four spikes fanned from one point, disclosed here as four rather than the real range (three to thirteen, species-dependent) for the same reason the dandelion's clock keeps eleven filaments and not a real head's few hundred — legible beats exact at this scale. Click the flowering head again and it folds back down; unlike the dandelion's one-way blow this one runs both directions, since nothing here claims a season for it. Source: Digitaria, Merriam-Webster.

The plantain got one too (2026-08-29), the last of the five: click its flowering spike and it swings down in a quick, sharp flick. That exact motion is a real duel — in Kent it's called “dongers,” in Scotland “Carl doddies” (also the plant's own name there): two players each hold a stalk and take turns trying to knock the other's flower head off with a fast downward strike, the winner being whoever's head is still on when the other's isn't. This page has no second stalk to duel against, so it just answers for itself: a flick knocks its own head loose about half the time, disclosed here as an even toy coin flip, not a claim about how the real duel is actually decided — force, angle, and luck, not fixed odds. Click a bare stalk to grow a fresh head and try again. Source: Plantago lanceolata, Wikipedia, citing Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996).

All five weeds in this bed now answer to something, and none of it was planned when this page opened (2026-08-08) — each one waited for a visit that wanted it, not a schedule that demanded it.