Badass Tough Plants You Know Of

Heya permies! I am curious. What are the toughest, most badass, plants you all know of? What uses do you have for them or think are possible? Some people might call them invasives, some might call them pests, but I like to think of them as badass plants that know how to make the most of every situation!

For example, we have Kudzu, "The Vine That Ate the South", and it is amazing at converting sunlight and water into organic matter. This plant can be upcycled through goats to produce milk and meat. It is a robust chop-and-drop mulching plant and can be used to create lush living shaded areas.

Another one is honey locust and black locust. Honey locust produces nice edible pods, and its sister black locust is a nitrogen fixer. They are both super-fast growing, produce dense wood, and make good fuel for your rocket mass heaters. Also, both of them produce tons of fragrant flowers to feed your pollinators which leads to honey production, om nom nom! The seed pods can also be used as animal fodder, and the wood can also be used in hugelkultur mounds.

Scotch Broom. That shit is hardy as hell as the seeds would survive a blast furnace.

Jujube trees. Heat, cold, salt, alkaline...

The best hardy plants will be the ones that is native to where your from. Taking plants from different hardness zones is harder to grow because the are not used to the environment but don't let that discourage you from trying them. For a list of native plants from where you live just search your state and hardness zone / native plants.

Knotweed is the meanest nastiest weed there is, it drinks Roundup and 2,4-d for a snack and then loves to be burned, chopped and mowed over. This year I decided I'm going to eat it.

comfrey and reeds canary grass are both pretty hardy and competitive in conditions that they like. We build thickets of himilaya blackberry here too, but they're not so tough to discourage, and they're not even easy to transplant. Horsetail is pretty tough to discourage or stop..

I have been growing these plants in Los Angeles and would put them in the tough category.

Goji,
Comfrey, when shaded
Jujube, self seeds, tolerates neglect, not threatened by other pioneers
Litchi Tomato, great flavors
Rosemary

Silverthorn (Elaeagnus pungens) is a real beast! Said to tolerate drought, shade, sun, moisture, saline… in-laws. On its own, it’ll grow to a very large bush, and near a climbable tree, it’ll grow to a very large 20-30 foot tall bush/vine. Wow! If you plant these close together, a hedge for example, they will grow into a fortress.

I’m trying it out as a fruit/nitrogen producer - if the fruits are as tasty as autumn olive then I’ll be pleased.

It grows numerous ‘top canes’ which it uses to seek and grab nearby trees. These canes are a uniform thickness, very flexible, and I bet they’d be awesome for crafts. It does have large, very sharp thorns, but these are surprisingly infrequent. I’ve done some cutting on these and didn’t even need gloves. And the smell this plant makes! Incredible!

Okra is astoundingly tough; anyone who has grown it needs no reminder! Very productive in my heavy clay soil, and in my experience, does a great job of loosening the soil too.

I’ve seen Amaranth tolerate some extreme conditions. Saw one plant grow through two inches of gravel, on a compacted footpath, with no irrigation - it not only reached maturity, but one of its offspring did the same thing the next year.

Mulberry. I have seen these things growing out of the dust lodged in the top of a street sign post. many people refer to them as trash trees because the birds have planted their fence line and they are too lazy to remove them, and the fruit stains everything. They are great.

Zach Muller wrote:Mulberry. I have seen these things growing out of the dust lodged in the top of a street sign post. many people refer to them as trash trees because the birds have planted their fence line and they are too lazy to remove them, and the fruit stains everything. They are great.

I've seen some crazy fine Mulberries too. They exist.

i love this, badass plants' idea, yea! great topic!

Scot, knotweed is GREAT (annoying, invasive, terrible i mean). i learned how to cook it in japan. not sure if you've had it before but its super acid (think lemon-vinager) which actually i LOVE. cut the stalks early young and tender, before they produce their first full open leaves. blanche them in boiling water (give em a few seconds, esp the big ones) and then with a sharp knife peel the outer skin (too 'badass' to eat) and then cool quickly as to not overcook. i like to cut them into one inch peices and eat them as a cold salad with a vinagrette (miso!). if you discover any tips or recipes please share!

ANYWAY my favorite bad ass plant is by far Stinging Nettles. 'Ortie' here in FR.
IN the spring i pick the young tips and cook them fresh, make Nettle Pesto (fresh nettles blended with olive oil and salt), Pickled Nettles (raw nettles packed in jars with vinager and topped with olive oil, leave at last two weeks before eating), soup, etc etc, and whats left over i dry for tea.
The tea is super nutritious any ole time, but i drank it daily while pregnant and ended up with a 10lb baby, WHOOPS!
Later in the summer, you can cut the whole stalks and make a good fertilizer high in nitrogen , duh
Then when they go to seed you can harvest the seeds , also very nutritious (i have always wanted to try experimenting with the seeds, spouts? in cooking somehow? flour? anybody tried this?)
Seems like most animals wont walk thru them or eat them (eerrr maybe donkeys will? goats? dunno) they might make a good natural barrier of sorts.
People are pretty dang afraid of them too which is think is hillarious. maybe you could use them as a protective barrier against ignorant neighbors? that'd be nice!
what else
they make a beautiful green dye
the stalks can be used as a super fiber for paper , etc

and most bad ass of all, you dont have to think about growing it, it grows itself. it. wont. go. away.... which is a GREAT thing!

Danielle Diver wrote:i love this, badass plants' idea, yea! great topic!

Danielle,

What does it mean when your nettles start to purple. At the tips? What if the stem is purbled and blued but the leaves are sea-foam green. Are they different species? Different habitat?

I'm asking you about stinging nettle.

Bermuda grass. Great out in the pasture, an almost impossible to get rid of invasive everywhere else outside of deep shade. It has no problem growing up through the top of square bales set tile fashion down on top of it.

Sasaella ramosa. A fast spreading groundcover bamboo in sun or shade.

Wild plum. Suckers wildly to form a dense thicket of thorny shrubs that have the saving grace of producing delicious fruit.

Hen-and-Chicks is an extremely cold and drought hardy succulent that can survive and thrive in neglect. The leaves can be used to relieve sore throats. As an added benefit, the plant has high aesthtic value.

Landon Sunrich wrote:
What does it mean when your nettles start to purple. At the tips? What if the stem is purbled and blued but the leaves are sea-foam green. Are they different species? Different habitat?

I'm asking you about stinging nettle.

This sounds more like horse nettle/dead nettle (which I wouldn't eat) than stinging nettle (which I love to eat!). Hmmm - one good plant ID for stinging nettle: they definitely will sting you!

Nooooooo

This is due to altered conditions. The purple tips.

Bindweed!

Eric Thompson wrote:

Landon Sunrich wrote:
What does it mean when your nettles start to purple. At the tips? What if the stem is purbled and blued but the leaves are sea-foam green. Are they different species? Different habitat?

I'm asking you about stinging nettle.

This sounds more like horse nettle/dead nettle (which I wouldn't eat) than stinging nettle (which I love to eat!). Hmmm - one good plant ID for stinging nettle: they definitely will sting you!

ive never heard of stinging nettles starting to purple per se (i dont grow it but rather wildharvest it, no need to grow in my region), but it is very common to find nettles with purplish stems ... could be a number of things (cross breed, cold, mineral, etc) although im not an expert. if your nettles are clear of toxic contamination, i wouldnt worry and keep eating.
if, in fact, it is a different, smaller ground plant that does not sting, it could very well be Lamium purpureum in which case it is still fine to eat, but not as good as the stinging. L. purpureum you can snip the tips and add them to salad.

Autumn olive (E. angustifilia) extreamley tough , barren soils. Produces large quantities of fruit however individual plants are inconsistent producers, usually they are so numerous that you can find producing plants, I freeze gallons of berries.

This is a fun thread!

Here are my picks from Canada (for your area I recommend asking gardeners, farmers, and environmentalists what the worst plants are: those will probably be the toughest and most adapted to utilizing the conditions in your area.

Also Mark Shepard's recommendation to look at the plants growing in your roadside ditch is a good one!

Horse Chestnut, this grows all over Canada, cold hardy, windy hardy, pollution resistant, tolerant of poor soils, painful seeds to walk on...
English Ivy, great livestock forage, beautiful, drought tolerant,
Himalayan Blackberry, painful thorns, good pig forage, good berries, hard to remove large thickets without serious machinery.
Scotch Broom, rejuvenates poor soils, spreads itself like crazy, nice flowers, okay livestock forage
Buttercup, low growing ground-cover, nice flowers, very tough (although I suspect it needs some sort of human disturbance, like mowing, to outcompete other plants)
Elderberry, both natives and non natives are tough (the fruit of the natives is actually much more flavourful in my opinion), can be cut to the ground repeatedly and will still come back, poisonous leaves, branches, etc.
Grasses are tough but I dont know the names of them, they do need mowing/grazing however or after a few years they will die out.

The thistle genus of plants (cirsium) are well known as colonizing of bare and disturbed soil, in climates all the way across Mexico to the USA and to Canada. They can grow taproots up to 70cm long or more, and some of their taproots are edible when young, like Bull Thistle. These plants are wonderful provide plentiful nectar for pollinators and numerous seeds to feed the hungry birds.

Christmasberry trees, haole koa trees, guinea grass. Very tough plants that seem to thrive on neglect, drought, low soil fertility.

Rosemary! I put these anywhere I know I have terrible clay soil, just supplement with a little potting soil initially. I don't take care of them at all except for some herb harvesting. They even do ok in dry summers. (I'm in the PNW).

Over here in temperate Ireland we have a plant known as wild garlic which I've been told is actually a leek . It grows from underground bulbs and reproduces by seed freely. The leaves are long strap shaped and smell strongly of garlic. It has beautiful white flowers in the spring and all parts are edible.
It is known as an invasive weed and most gardeners look their noses down on it but I've given it free reign in a corner of my garden. It is fully frost hardly and once established is practically impossible to get rid of . It is a particularly nuisance of a plant when it gets into beds with other plants as it will intermingle and become endemic. In the right place though it is beautiful, good for pollinators and super reliable

I bought a hybrid white strawberry—trade name "Hula berry", often called pineberry—off the clearance rack at Home Depot a decade ago. Three plants originally, and I'll never lack for it again. In zone 8b mediterranean climate, this thing is a honey badger: I've seen it choke out mint. It's a great ground cover, tolerates sun or shade, and with a regular strawberry somewhere in bee range to cross-pollinate, you get tasty white berries that look like they're from Mars and taste like pineapple.

Spotted Knapweek.  Prohibits the growth of most garden plants. After hand pulling for an hour, I have a bad taste of this plant in my mouth.  Wicked

Johnsongrass and winter creeper.

Sweet potatoes, Hardy yams, pokeweed, lemon balm, goldenrod, hoja santa

Zone 9, Mediterranean

Bermuda grass
Himalayan blackberry
Canary grass (Phalaris aquatica)

Upsides:
Bermuda and canary are great sheep forage.
Blackberry is good eating and good wildlife support as well as sheep forage.
Canary grass is good sheep forage at certain times in its growth.

Downsides:
Both Bermuda and especially Canary grass, take over to such an extent and with such deep roots, that it is taking over my pasture completely, making it a STRICT monoculture. NOTHING I’ve tried outcompetes it. It prevents EVERYTHING else from growing. I saw a 2 inch blackberry start just wilting and dying in the masses of thick stalks of Canary!! (Unheard of around here, Blackberry has no limits here)
Nothing eats Canarygrass seeds unfortunately.

Canary grass can be toxic to livestock at certain stages of its growth and after drought. So it’s not healthy year round (it never dies here) and it sucks up Vit B1 in livestock (life threatening), so there’s that to contend with if it gets too big a part of their diet.
We have to pull up swards of it every year to allow plant and wildlife diversity to happen. The mature stalks are like young bamboo, same with the extensive rhizomatous root system,  so it is REALLY tough going.

Blackberry I would not mind all over the place, if it didn’t have thorns. Unfortunately thorns makes it difficult to get around the property w tires always popping and skin bleeding. We pull that up, outside of the perimeter growth, which we leave up for security purposes.
Honestly I’d rather have cactus than blackberry tho, for that purpose.

David Eyk wrote:I bought a hybrid white strawberry—trade name "Hula berry", often called pineberry—off the clearance rack at Home Depot a decade ago. Three plants originally, and I'll never lack for it again. In zone 8b mediterranean climate, this thing is a honey badger: I've seen it choke out mint. It's a great ground cover, tolerates sun or shade, and with a regular strawberry somewhere in bee range to cross-pollinate, you get tasty white berries that look like they're from Mars and taste like pineapple.

Would you believe I bought same variety off a sale rack earlier this year. They are growing well so far looking forward to berries next year 😁

For a Mediterranean climate - definitely rosemary - it thrives on "bad" soil and neglect; collected a cutting from an abandoned goldfield's cottage!  Then there's olives - Olea europaea - also thrive where other things won't, just think, some of the trees in Europe must be 100's of years old.  Mine is just a kid at 30! Easily spread by birds and animals.
Other people swear by mint as being tough to kill - me, I've rarely had a plant last more than a year - no idea why.   Fennel is another that pops up reliably along with asparagus once it gets going - found one in the creek bottom the other day.  Figs?  the birds do a great job spreading those about. So plenty to choose from

This summer I returned to my house in central TX to help my son move in. It had been rented out for thirteen years. While mowing the weeds in my half acre yard, I smelled a strong garlic smell. My garlic chives, a.k.a. society garlic had spread throughout the yard from the remnants of my herb garden in spite of thin layer of poor very alkaline topsoil. The renters had mown through the years, so that spread the seed. Of course, the chives grew lushly in the area that had been my garden. I had only one plant initially, and after two volunteers appeared, I used to deadhead the flowers to prevent it taking over my herb garden. It won the battle!

I live on the Adriatic coastal plain. Here nettles and leaf fennel are hardy, useful plants that seem to survive anything. And fig trees readily self-sow.

I'm really impressed with the hardy succulents like Hen and Chicks in my climate as previously mentioned. They are slower growing compared to other plants but they are tenacious. I like to place them in difficult areas that other plants won't grow in such as primarily gravel/stone areas. I have one particular plant that is shaded out by flowers in the spring/summer/fall and yet it still slowly expands its domain without complaint.

Bloody Dock is another tenacious plant that I am experimenting with in my wildlife gardens. Once established, it can take a lot of pruning/animal pressure and come back. They tolerate the winter season well and create flower stalks readily to obtain seed from.

My favorite plant for the past few years has been the Haskap or "Honeyberry" (Lonicera Caerulea). It is badass in the sense that it's a fruit shrub that can handle extremely cold temperatures, some say as low as -45 F. It also does well in higher elevations, on berms, open areas, in nearly full shade, in various types of soil etc... It is definitely the fruit shrub of choice in Colorado in my opinion, even though various types of blackberries and raspberries do great here.

I have about 3 or so well established Haskap plants and a bunch of younger ones, including Aurora, Tundra and various hybrid strains. My most established plant is a 4yo Aurora which I have been propagating for a couple years now. Propagation can be a bit tricky but I've had the best results taking cuttings when the sap content is higher, in late winter/early spring.

The berries themselves are packed with nutrients and can have a very sweet taste, especially the lower growing Tundra variety. The Aurora berries are more tart (which I prefer) and savory but still sugary in taste. I can see why this plant is taking off in Canada and I believe it will become more popular in the US as well.  

James Lucas wrote:Spotted Knapweek.  Prohibits the growth of most garden plants. After hand pulling for an hour, I have a bad taste of this plant in my mouth.  Wicked

But does it do other things besides covering the ground?

Mint.  Absolutely nothing stops mint.  Somehow mint got into my field area before I owned the ground.  When I mow/bush hog it, it smells very nice and I like that particular area.




Eric

In an amenable climate (basically anywhere that isn't too cold or too dry), bamboos of various kinds seem to rise pretty high on the list for both resilience and usefulness.   If they can grow big enough to give canes multiple inches in diameter, their usefulness multiplies still further since you can split them into even "wooden" strips that can weave walls and fences, make hoops to hold cloth or plastic over beds and so much more.  

Most types of brambles. The wild black berries in my yard take over and it’s like dealing with barb wire that grows everywhere I don’t want it to. I originally encouraged the growth of them but the berries don’t taste very good for some reason.

I'd throw in Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana). It's a true survivor, popping up through concrete and gravel everywhere. While you have to know how to prepare it (the young greens are edible, but it's toxic when mature), it produces huge amounts of biomass for chop-and-drop mulch and provides tons of berries for birds. Plus, it's just ridiculously tenacious.