Seaweed? Not weed in the dictionary sense of `herbaceous plant not valued for use or beauty" or "unproductive, troublesome or noxious growth". Sea vegetable would often be the right description. There's dulse or dilisk, for example. You chew it like gum, and may swallow it when sufficiently champed, if you like. The value of the overall bounty of the sea, which we know, for example, from the fields of Aran, their soil, that is, being created to a certain extent from rotted-down kelp or wrack, to use other terms, is well known.
Anyway, the value of this bounty of the sea has been recognised from the time of Pliny the Elder in the first century AD in his Natural History, according to an article in The Countryman magazine from England. And Romans generally recognised its value for manuring land and as a foodstuff for animals. Then, too, the ancient Chinese made offerings of it to their ancestors, and we know now that it has been part of the Japanese diet for long. Even today, this article tells us, an estimated quarter of Japanese food consists of one form or other of sea vegetables.
There are over seven hundred species of this plant around the coasts of Britain and Ireland, it seems, where it is known variously as kelp or wrack. As a plant food or manure for enriching the soil, according to our Countryman writer, John Gatrell. And it is clean and easy to handle. It is also said that, according to species, and whether it is wet or dry, it is a valuable source of vitamins. The high potash content makes it especially suitable for fruit and tomato crops. It can be had in concentrated form for foliar feeding.
The article concentrates on the Channel Islanders' experiences with what the title has as "Island Gold" washed up on the shore, and, as with us, the custom was to burn it to get the mineral content from the ashes of what the Channel Islanders call vraic. Some farmers just put the weed on their crops rather than as ashes. Lots more information from the November issue of the magazine, handily pocket-size.
Many people will remember Moira O'Neill's poem: "The wrack was dark and shiny where it floated in the sea,/ There was no one in the brown boat but only him an' me,/Him to cut the sea wrack, me to mind the boat,/An' not a word between us the hours we were afloat,/The wet wrack,/The sea wrack,/The wrack was strong to cut." From her Songs of the Glens of Antrim. Y