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Weed Value, 2007

At Public Picnic

Public space intervention, locating old medical plants and herbs. Yellow signs with description of the plants and the use of them were put up next to them in the area around Tikøbsgade in the centre of Copenhagen.

The Danish landscape has its own resources and its own invaluable genetic bank.
With their original DNA they grow in deserted buildings and places in the city, in our backyards and back gardens and breed as long as we have the thoughtfulness to take care of and preserve the few spaces where they can actually grow.
These relict plants (left-over from former plant communities preserved in small climatic pockets, where niche conditions make their survival possible) are spontaneous descendants of utility plants in many generations from the early Middle Age: Gul Burre, Katost, Kongelys, Bulmeurten and Gederams, Skarntyde, Vejbred, Sæbeurt and Skvaderkål. They are all amongst the 270 living and registered species imported to the country because the population needed them, some of them as medicinal plants, others as food or herbs.
70 of these species are seriously threatened by extermination. They are about to be banished by city renewal projects, pearl gravel and herbicide. Mechanical lawn mowers thrash these plants of great ethno botanical value down to its roots. Many of these grow around Tikøbsgade. As such this area hold a long list of unique resources very usable as ingredients in cooking.
I put up yellow signs in the area marking where they grow. The signs contain a list of recipes for dishes in which they are useful.

©Lise Tovesdatter Skou