Many invasive plants are still being sold at garden centers
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
Part of me wants to plant a garden containing all of these to see which one wins
The Siberian elm next door and oak down the street end up with many more seedlings in the yard than the maples.
I can see it being a different situation in a yard adjacent to a stand of more natural trees though.
I'm currently resting my legs on a coffee table made from the trunk of one that came down in a burst storm some years ago. It's a soft maple but quite nice for wood working.
Just biding my time until the natives I planted next to them grow up a bit more and then I will take them all down and get them milled up.
My parents, on the other hand, thought it might be fun to plant a little bamboo patch about twenty years ago. They now have an entirely uncontrollable forest of the stuff.
This did not at all work, as the bamboo grew back and broke through the concrete as needed, effectively becoming an armored rootball of hate.
Remove fire and cattle and Ulex will slowly retreat and dissapear
(And that’s saying a lot considering its upvotes lol)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/03/opinion/sunday/russia-hog...
[2] http://www.russiaknowledge.com/2020/07/14/the-day-of-the-gia...
It wasn't bred, but discovered in Sakartvelo, after which it was intentionally spread throughout the USSR to be used to produce animal fodder (feed) as it grows fast. The seeds are easily spread by rivers and can lay dormant for a long time.
On the other hand, poison hemlock looks pretty similar, and although it is a non-native weed, it isn't noxious enough that the county will send someone out to destroy it. In my experience it's a little more common than hogweed.
Well that may be it. There's a place up in Umpqua called Hemlock Lake. There's definitely a lot of hemlock out there too. But I wouldn't trust myself to differentiate, but can say that some of the really big plants looked exactly like the pictures you linked.
It doesn't help that local hardware stores and the biggies sell fewer natives than non-natives.
Both the policy and the plant sales significantly matter here: we are in Virginia a stone's throw from the Chesapeake Bay. Doing right by the environment (plants, wildlife, water) is important in its own right but the beauty of the environment is also why so many people moved here to retire.
People are ridiculous. So afraid of change!
It’s quite possible that people were objecting to the general expansion of powers/policies of the HOA and the “environmental stewardship policy” rather than this specific clause. (I’m not the type to willingly buy in an HOA area, so I can sympathize, even if I’m fine with this one clause.)
The problem is that there's a hard trade-off between private property ownership and walkability. If you want to live somewhere where you can walk and bike to restaurants, houses inherently need to be close together. And when houses are closer together on smaller lots, there is more value to having communal property, and to keeping private property cohesively managed. In short, the more walkable a neighborhood you want to live in, the more game theory pushes you toward forming HOAs, co-ops, etc.
I don’t think it’s my place to care what windows you have, what color your door is painted, if your hedges are trimmed to the regulation height, or whatever other ridiculous policies HOAs can dream up.
There’s a sidewalk out front. If you don’t like the look of my house, I invite you to look at something else while you walk past; I’ll do the same.
As a matter of fact, I wound say the exact opposite. The HOA is more likely going to keep out the bars, cafes, restaurants, and groceries that actually make a neighborhood walkable.
That's crazy, considering that policy is likely adding an absolutely insane amount to everyone's property values. When NYC re-landscaped The Highline to make it exclusively native plants, property values in the area literally went up 10x.
I live in a HOA, and the first thing I did when I moved in was to dig up all the forsythia along our driveway and replace them with grafted pawpaws. Planting nice trees is the only home improvement you can make where you can spend $50 and add $100,000 to your property value. The returns are literally like getting a chance to go back to 2011 and buy Bitcoin.
Any source on this?Because it seems like Highline-adjacent properties probably would’ve seen a pretty good ROI over the past 10 years regardless of what plants were up there.
> Planting nice trees is the only home improvement you can make where you can spend $50 and add $100,000 to your property value. The returns are literally like getting a chance to go back to 2011 and buy Bitcoin.
Any source on this one? I work with arborists and even they’re not quite so gung-ho on promoting this kind of return. And $50 is getting you a sapling that’s going to take (maybe) decades to maximize any return.
As a more general principle, try to buy any good pawpaw cultivar. If you look peacefulheritage.org, which is probably the top grower in the country, they go one sale 1 day a year and completely sell out in 20 minutes. You need to license the same software that people use to scalp PS5s to even have a chance to buy one. There literally isn't any consumer product on the market that has this high of an asymmetry between supply and demand.
If you go to the estates of any wealthy families, e.g. the Rockefeller estates or the Getty estates or whatever, the one thing they all have in common is really nice trees. Picking out trees for the new Apple campus was the last thing Steve Jobs did before he died. If it's an exaggeration to say that being able to buy nice trees is the entire point of having money, it's probably not by much.
$350K in 1997 to $3.15M in 2016. Probably hard to find a property in lower Manhattan that didn’t appreciate like that.
> If you go to the estates of any wealthy families, e.g. the Rockefeller estates or the Getty estates or whatever, the one thing they all have in common is really nice trees.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
If they had ripped out their lawns, would that have been an HOA violation?
HOAs basically allow you to pay a monthly fee for the right to dictate what your neighbors can do on private land they own, in the name of preserving property values.
Some love them; I think it goes without saying I'm not a fan.
I used to work at a botanical garden here on Hawaii Island that boasted of their 6 different species of Medinilla, even selling a fridge magnet in the gift shop. I tried and tried to explain how backwards this was and how these magnets would be viewed by anyone who knew or cared about fragile native ecosystems. Their response always came down to something like "but these ones are prettier." They also sold little bagged starts of two horribly invasive plants! (Bamboo orchid and Kahili ginger)
If I see Andean pampas grass at a home depot again, I might have a problem.
Bittersweet OTOH is horrible, it colonizes everything, strangles 100 foot trees, grows roots in every direction, and makes tons of berries that get distributed by critters (I.e. crosses roads and rivers from adjacent land even if you manage to eradicate it on your own property)
We chose to back out of a house offer due to invasive bamboo when the owner was unwilling to reduce the price to cover professional removal.
I feel like a different species sometimes when dealing with humans that negotiate this hard. I tend to overpay and be done with it so I can think about other things, but I suppose that's leaving money on the table.
The last place I bought had a giant crack in the concrete floor. Inspector said it was fine, so I just let it slide.
This was a case where the seller had mowed back the bamboo and placed weed barrier and fresh soil to hide it. There hadn't been any visible bamboo during the viewing that precipitated our offer. About 3 days later we inspected and found pervasive multi-inch long shoots of bamboo throughout the yard including big shoots going into a supporting shared wall with the neighbor and into the neighbor's yard as well as into the house foundation and siding.
To completely remove the bamboo we would have had a large excavation that included tearing out and rebuilding the entry walkway disrupting our use of the home. To pay someone to do the labor, guarantee removal (there are specialist companies), and perform the geo-engineering work was estimated to cost 25-30K here in Seattle.
To be clear, we did ask the seller to reduce their price to accommodate that work because we felt we had offered a generous (and competitive above many competing offers) price for the house. That price did not include removing the hidden-at-the-time-of-offer bamboo. The seller didn't like that which was their right. They rejected our counter and months later sold the house for less than our offer minus the cost of the bamboo removal.
[edit: planting invasive bamboo in your yard literally reduces the value of your home]
The only way to keep it from moving further into yards or gardens is to pour concrete trenches it can’t grow thru. impossible to eradicate entirely and while it’s shooting new sprouts up from the ground after its first day or two of softness starts to get more wood like and are wicked sharp easily being able to pierce through skin/clothes/shoes and cause some nasty cuts.
No one should ever plant that stuff voluntarily!
It also won't spread beyond wet areas, so a lot of people control it simply by not watering the surrounding areas.
In terms of maintenance, bamboo only shoots for a few weeks in the spring - it won't grow at all for the rest of the year. The real scourge in my yard are the weeds that grow year-round.
I would never plant bamboo in my garden in any case but if you have it, treat it like a vegetable. If it can't be cut applying a slight pressure with a potato knife is too old. Discard the hard central parts. Cook the soft parts near nodes.
Maybe different species have different growing characteristics but the one we had was awful and constantly was trying to creep from the side of the back yard into the main lawn area.
There are definitely different species of bamboo. The two main categories are running and clumping. Running bamboo is the hardest to contain, with rhizomes that travel long distances. Clumping bamboo spreads slowly.
Yellow starthistle, on the other hand, should be a felony.
It's kind of amazing that weeds are a real life example of where "kill it with fire" is actually a realistic and appropriate response, and less harmful than herbicides.
If I were a billionaire I'd fund research to create some sort of Dutch-elm like disease for it and release it in secret.
Something that you give to horses to promote the grow of a shiny coat and better health. Berries are also a good human food.
What is invasive in Georgia can be well-mannered in West Texas or North Dakota. Barberry is not invasive in the high deserts, where it continues to be a valued ornamental. Russian olives can raise havoc in riparian areas, but be fine for areas where birds can’t spread the seeds to moister soils.
There is a “patchwork” of state regulations because there is a patchwork of climatic zones and ecosystems in the US. There is no mention in the article that, although nurseries sell invasives, most nurseries have policies not to ship invasives to the individual States where they are identified as such by local authorities.
Saying that, non-invasive natives are generally better, but not so much better that non-natives (that could be invasive in other climates) don’t have a role to play in landscaping and gardening. Skip the giant hogweed….
I went with my son’s middle school class on a field trip to the Audubon Society preserve in Portland, years ago. The guide gave the kids a long lecture about evil English ivy, explaining the concept of non-native invasive species. Portlanders organize groups to tear down the ivy in parks, often trampling the native ferns in their zeal.
Not ten minutes later the same guide showed the class a family of ducks crossing the path. Everyone oohed and aahed — ducklings, so cute. My son pointed out that they were mandarin ducks, a non-native species. The guide went quiet.
My point was the apparent lack of awareness involved in demonizing a plant species but giving a pass to a duck, when both are non-native species introduced by people. Why are Portlanders tearing down ivy but not killing house sparrows? Or marijuana plants for that matter, also not native to North America.
Portland is the Rose City, famous for the rose gardens. Those are non-native flowers, no one is running around tearing them up.
Because the duck isn't invasive.
> Why are Portlanders tearing down ivy but not killing house sparrows?
Because the ivy is invasive.
> Portland is the Rose City, famous for the rose gardens. Those are non-native flowers, no one is running around tearing them up. Environmentalism generally stops when things start
Because the roses aren't invasive.
> house sparrows
The house sparrows are invasive (at least in the northeast, not sure about the PNW). A lot of don't realize this, because they're ubiquitous. Same with starlings.
Here's where we get into the topic of humans being humans, generally acting in response to straightforward preferences.
Mass slaughter of cute (and familiar to the point where people don't realize they're not native) little birds to protect other little birds is a tougher pill to swallow than just ripping up some plants and planting different plants. This is too icky for a lot of people to consider.
Moreover, the effects are too subtle for most people to notice, who are generally not "in tune" with nature at all. How many people can even identify different sparrow species in the first place?
I don't think this amounts to some kind of double standard like you seem to be implying. People just find it harder to kill things that have blood and brains, than to kill things that have roots and leaves, especially if said blood-and-brain things are cute and/or familiar.
> Humans and their dogs and livestock are invasive and destructive
Humans: And? This is like saying that environmentalists are hypocrites because they drive cars.
Cats: Cats that are allowed to roam free outdoors are a big problem. I think people who actually are interested in this topic know that, and as far as I know this notion has been gaining popularity in recent years. People want to let little Fluffy roam free, and don't want to think of him as a bloodthirsty predator, whose aggregate behavior amounts to ecological-scale genocide. This thought crosses both the icky line and the selfish-human line.
Dogs: Arguably, only dogs with inept owners are invasive/destructive. Although once in a while even a good dog will dig up a native cottontail burrow, chase after a woodchuck, or scare off some deer. As with cats, it crosses both the icky line and the selfish-human line.
Sparrows and especially starlings have competed with native species. They are such successful species that they may have made their way to the New World on their own if humans hadn't introduced them.
I lived in Portland for a long time. Once I was hiking with my son, on a trail with clear signs Stay On The Path and Dogs Must Be On Leash. We came across a woman off the trail, with her black Labrador off leash digging in the brush, tearing up a fern. I stopped to ask her to put her dog on a leash, and mentioned she should not be off trail damaging the plants. She was busy tearing down English ivy, and responded haughtily that she was doing that tree a favor. Besides her lack of awareness and virtue signaling it seemed she was doing more harm than good, and her off-leash dog, which no doubt never bit her, was barking at my young son and scaring him (which is why I stopped to ask her to leash her dog in the first place).
I hesitate to call such people hypocrites, or to point out that all the pot growing in Oregon required clearing native trees and plants. I call that lack of awareness, and in some cases virtue signaling.
Sounds typical of Portlanders. Zealous about tearing things down with no regard for the consequences.
Who are these people who want to own a thistle, yet alone pay for one?
Cultural and aesthetical reasons. Same as cacti.
There is a category in landscaping for plants that are strongly geometrical, tall and bold. They are called architectural plants and are a important design element to provide interest out seasons. A good design takes care of color and tone but also will include texture and tactile appealing. Some thistles are native, undemanding and can be really beautiful in winter covered in ice. They have often interesting patterns in leaves and flowers. The indigo flowers of the artichoke in top of a silvery foliage are really spectacular.
And thistles attract lots of interesting insects.
The problem is not that they are thistles, is that they aren't native and in this case also poisonous.
I can't "slow clap" enough for this statement.
As a general rule, If is in Aliexpress is 1) the wrong species, 2) strongly invasive
While the headline is misleading, it is also technically correct in an interesting way
The article says “ONE OF the world’s most invasive weeds.” Let’s suppose it was #22 on the list of all known invasive weeds ranked by invasiveness
But as a MEMBER of that group, one can legitimately label it as “A world’s worst invasive weed” and then drop the “A”
Interesting techique to make hyperbolic claims that are technically true due to the rules of English!
Do people do this elsewhere?
Or at least that's how I interpret it as a native speaker!
“The rockettes have done xyz”
“A rockette has done xyz”
“Rockette does xyz”
Rockette here is used as a category of people, a label. She is a member of “The Rockettes”
Similarly, “most invasive weed” is a member of “THE MOST INVASIVE WEEDS” group, and dropping the “a” is done in newspaper headlines a lot, things are often contracted such as Politico or Prez or POTUS etc.
Not “a top” but “top”. But really, they dropped the “a”. Get it?
“Best Western Hotel offers discounts starting in May”
Does this mean this is really the best Western Hotel?
“...it’s clear we as a public also lack awareness about which plants are invasive and how they spread to new areas,” Beaury says.
One good thing: the study is generating interest by enforcement agencies who want to crack down on illegal sales.
"Whoa, I just saw old widow Johnson down the street doing the perp walk. What was her crime?"
"Opening planting cogongrass in her front yard."
Speaks directly up at US AG dept drone hovering nearby, "Uh, I never did like her."
> "Whoa, I just saw old widow Johnson down the street doing the perp walk. What was her crime?"
> "Opening planting cogongrass in her front yard."
Cracking down on illegal sales is highly appropriate, and very different from cracking down on people who (presumably unaware of the risks) plant it.
Sounds like a HOA would be prefect for you.
I think this is a denial of what "invasive species" are, and even evolution itself.
An invasive species is something that thrives in many environments and outcompetes natives.
Since humans have become concerned about such things, loopholes in human thinking, behavior and social institutions are necessarily part of the fitness function that makes something invasive.
People can target something specific on a micro level, but at a high level, "invasive" will itself evolve to whatever works because people are psychologically or institutionally blind to it.
Have you ever tried to mow thistles or vetch?
Don't take this the wrong way, but that's a little unhinged. It's a terrible idea to give any governing body this much power.