Landscape plantings couldn’t be done on Alumni Walk till new loam was spread, and the loam had to wait until the paving was done. Net result, shown on Aug. 28, 2008: a fine crop of weeds. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Green amaranth is often called pigweed. But so are lamb’s quarters. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Even as workers were whacking down and pulling up the green shag carpet of Alumni Walk weeds, Susan Hayward joined Campus Construction Update at the site on Aug. 27 to identify the plants that had volunteered so eagerly this summer.

Hayward is an amateur botanist, a professional environmental educator and president of the Stanton Bird Club.

A few species by far dominated the crop: lamb’s quarters, field mustard and green amaranth. (Both green amaranth and lamb’s quarters are often called pigweed.)

All three can be eaten — although nitrates accumulate in amaranth leaves, so you’d want to limit yourself to a few young leaves in your salad. Or forget it altogether.

You’ve likely seen lamb’s quarters, an intrepid and prolific plant with pointy leaves that are green on top and whitish on the bottom. It was by far the most profuse weed on Alumni Walk.

“Commons could cook this up and feed the whole campus,” said plant expert Susan Hayward, indicating the masses of lamb’s quarters on Alumni Walk. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

A field-mustard blossom. The greens are nutritious and deliciously bitter-spicy. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

“Commons could cook this up and feed the whole campus,” Hayward said, indicating the masses of lamb’s quarters. In fact, the plant was first brought to this country from Europe as a pot herb, and its flavor resembles that of spinach.

But, like pigweed, lamb’s quarters can concentrate undesirable substances, and moderation is recommended.

The seeds that become your hot dog topping come from black mustard, a relative of field mustard. But field mustard greens are nutritious and have a delicious bitter-spicy taste. (Another relative, the tasty broccoli rabe, turns up in grocery stores in the spring — delicious sautéed with olive oil, garlic, ground chile pepper and a little broth, and served with pasta. Shrimp optional.)

Hayward pointed out other specimens whose value was more decorative than culinary. Lady’s thumb has long, pointed leaves sporting irregular purple blotches, which raises the question of what exactly the lady was doing with her thumbs.

The best-looking weed on Alumni Walk in August 2008 is velvet-leaf. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

The best-looking weed, though, was velvet-leaf, whose rounded, heart-shaped leaves really did feel like velvet. It’s also known as Indian mallow — it comes from India — and pie-maker, because the seed cases look like pie crusts.

“I keep a life list of plants I have ever seen,” Hayward said, “and velvet-leaf is a new one for me.”

A weed is a weed, of course, only if you don’t like it, and we like most plants. Our tour turned up only a couple specimens that we were glad to tell goodbye. Everyone’s good friend, crabgrass, was one.

Another was one of the few native species we discovered: ragweed, whose plain green flowers are hard to see but, as many allergy sufferers know, easy to detect.

Everyone’s favorite wild plant, ragweed, is abundant on Alumni Walk during August 2008. (Doug Hubley/ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College)

Award-winning poet Pattiann Rogers presents a talk titled “Life in an Expanding Universe” for the 2003 Philip J. Otis lecture at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, in the Muskie Archives, Campus Avenue.

Sponsored by the Otis Endowment at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, the lecture is open to the public at no charge. For more information, please call 207-786-8204.

Linked to Annie Dillard, D.H. Lawrence and Walt Whitman, Rogers is known for verse that both embraces the natural world and unfolds the complexities of science. “I’ve never seen nature observed as closely, nor transfigured by human language, as in Pattiann Rogers’ poetry,” said Roald Hoffmann, Nobel laureate in chemistry.

Too, Rogers explores the essence of divinity, love and intimacy. Her “musical, lushly rhythmic lines show well the deep connection between the erotic and the holy that Rogers explores,” wrote reviewer Susan Carlisle in the Harvard Review.

Her works include Song of the World Becoming: Poems New and Collected, 1981-2001 ( 2001) and The Dream of the Marsh Wren: Writing as Reciprocal Creation (Milkweed, 1999). Publishers Weekly selected her sixth book, Firekeeper: New and Selected Poems (Milkweed) as one of the Best Books Published in 1994.

Born in Missouri, Rogers graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri in 1961. She earned an M.A. from the University of Houston in 1981. Now a Colorado resident, she has received numerous grants and awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a poetry fellowship from the Lannan Foundation and five Pushcart Prizes.

The annual Otis Lecture at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is funded by the Philip J. Otis Endowment, established in 1996 by a gift from Margaret V. B. and C. Angus Wurtele in memory of their son, Philip, a member of the class of 1995 who died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mount Rainier.

In recognition of Otis’ appreciation for nature, the endowment helps support ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ programs with an environmental focus, in particular those exploring the spiritual and moral dimensions of humanity’s relationship with the environment.