Useful plants and their uses

One entry in this list is not a term but an idiom from the herb garden. Gegen etwas ist kein Kraut gewachsen says, word for word, that no herb has grown against something, and it means that there is no remedy: nothing can be done about it. It keeps the logic of the old herbals, where das Kraut was a medicinal plant and every complaint was expected to have one. The proverb in its gravest form is about death — gegen den Tod ist kein Kraut gewachsen — but in everyday German it is used with a shrug, for colds, heartbreak, bureaucracy or plain stupidity: Gegen Dummheit ist kein Kraut gewachsen. Its shape is fixed. The negation stays, the verb stays in the perfect, and the thing resisted comes after gegen or is folded into dagegen. Dagegen gibt es kein Mittel says the same thing literally, and loses the herb garden with it.