Why doesn't Spanish needles (Bidens pilosa var. radiata) bloom?

In the land next to the herb garden that was acquired by the high-speed rail, every six months workers come through with brush cutters to clear the weeds completely. The rest of the time, no one from the high-speed rail comes to take care of it at all, so all the weed management on that land falls to the farmers in the neighboring fields.

Everyone knows that if weeds are not cleared for half a year, they will grow taller than a person. It is easy for snakes and rats to hide in there, and the ripe seeds will scatter with the wind, nibbling away at and threatening the neighboring fields. So most farmers do not let weeds grow like that; they regularly spray herbicide and let those weeds slowly wither and die where they stand.

When I went back to work on the herb garden starting this year, my parents talked themselves hoarse telling our relatives that they absolutely must not spray herbicide around our field, because once the herbicide drifts into the field, all the herbs I had worked so hard to collect would die, and months of effort would be completely wasted.

In the countryside, regularly dealing with wild weeds is an unavoidable responsibility. So, in addition to the weeds inside the herb garden, I also had an extra high-speed rail responsibility zone that I had to weed myself. Every few weeks, since we had not yet bought a brush cutter, we had to take a sickle and cut back the large-flowered Spanish needles (Bidens pilosa var. radiata) that had already become a dominant population. Unexpectedly, after a year of cutting, those Spanish needles actually became more and more charming.

The Spanish needles in the neighboring fields have always been treated with herbicide. They grew tall and large, and the flowers bloomed in such abundance and so fast that I, a city slicker, had never imagined it. They seemed to be desperately trying to leave behind more descendants for themselves.

But in our responsibility zone, the more the Spanish needles were cut, the more tender they became. The more they were cut, the slower they grew, and they hardly bloomed at all, as if they knew their lives were safe and they could just live well.

Perhaps this is the repayment Spanish needles give us for our mercy in not killing them.