What's so Fascinating about a Weed?

It turns out, a whole lot!  I won't even get into identification, which is certainly not so fascinating for everyone, but what prompts me to write today is not simply the interesting story the weed itself holds, but rather what happens on the weed.  But first, a little descriptive painting of the place I am lucky enough to go to school in:

The Autumnal Equinox doesn't arrive for another two weeks, but here in Maine, Autumn restlessly advances.  It has been my daily pleasure to stroll up Runnals Hill each afternoon after classes to see the garden vegetables and wild fall blooms that make home of this windy, exposed location.  Cherry tomatoes--red, purple, yellow and orange--fall into the hand at the slightest nudge and the winter squashes and rainbow kales add color to the brown hillside as they await the harvest.  Queen Anne's lace, yarrows, purple clover and chicory show their delicate blooms among the spent dandelions and drying grasses of the almost-fall landscape.   Milkweed, stunted by the exposure on the hillside, half heartedly relent their tightly closed pods to the cajoling breeze, as if they have forgotten their long-prepared-for cue to release their seeds.

Rainbow kale is almost too pretty to eat

Despite an overgrowth of weeds and choking vines, the tomatoes
 are abundant and immensely flavorful

The ants constantly tend the aphids
and check for droplets of honeydew

On my walks, I like to inspect leaves and stems of various weeds and wildflowers for aphids, for often one can observe the interesting dynamic of trophobiosis between several species.  One day, on a lovely warm afternoon, I noticed quite a few honeydew aphids, with their  stylets deeply imbedded in the phloem of a nondescript weed at the edge of my path.  These fat, soft bodied insects encrusted every section of stem and the upper- and undersides of many of the leaves.  They looked like ducks, simultaneously bottom-up in a pond.  They twitched and squirmed here and there, and a few wriggled out of an old skin.  The skins still stuck to to the flesh of the plant by the mouthparts, as if they hadn't quite got the memo that their owners had abandoned them, and that sucking plant sap would now neither be necesary nor possible.

I was lucky enough to witness a very vicious response on the part of the ants when this earwig accidentally stumbled upon the aphid/ant scene.  Though it had no interests in the aphids, and was merely looking for a dark, damp spot to hide out in during the light of day, the ants seemed to take no risk and set about altering its course by crawling all over and around it.  It was only after the earwig had slipped beneath the leaf out of sight that the ants were satisfied.

My gaze traveled up the plant, and I took note of the busy honeydew ants, which make their living by harvesting the honeydew produced by the bottom side of aphids in tiny droplets each time they stab their stylets into the flesh of a host plant.  In so doing, they unwittingly provide a complete source of nourishment to the ants which vigorously protect their stock from such animals which make it their sole business to prey on aphids, namely, Lady beetles and others in the coccinelidae family.  Thus, these two unlike species, aphids and ants, exist through a persistent mutualistic relationship which provides protection for one and food for the other.

Ladybirds are invaluable to us gardeners, as they routinely feed on the aphids that plague our precious plants, but honeydew ants vigorously protect their aphid "farm" forcing this ladybird to find another source of aphids nearby

So The next you see a weed, and you are not really inclined to grab your Newcomb's and try and identify it, then just peak between the leaves and at the stem and see if you can spot a terrific example of some awesome natural phenomenon!  I encourage readers to leave their own experiences in a comment below.