Chamberbitter

When you buy your first house, there are things you probably never thought about before - like weeds. Mostly you just want to get rid of them, but when I started studying to be a master gardener, I wanted to know what they were - before I killed them.

I remember chamberbitter from those early homeowner days, and I remember thinking it looked like a tiny mimosa tree. Apparently I’m not the only one, because one of its nicknames is mimosa weed. It usually wouldn’t get very big, but it was everywhere. Every so often, a few of them would go unnoticed, and they would grow large enough to produce seeds. In fact, they produce a lot of seeds, and they can do it as early as two weeks after their own germination.

Maybe that’s why they have another nickname - gripe weed. But there is an upside. In South America they are believed to be good for the treatment of kidney stones.