Comments on: Invasive plants reconsidered

By: tj

tj — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 05:09:36 +0000

TO Rufino Osorio – the only sane mind here. All good points.

By: growing seeds

growing seeds — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 10:03:13 +0000

Thank you for this article and sharing your thoughts regarding these invasive species. They were interesting.

By: Getting Intimate « Frequently Found Growing On Disturbed Ground

Getting Intimate « Frequently Found Growing On Disturbed Ground — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:52:24 +0000

[...] Great quotes on invasive species from Edible Forest Gardens author David Jacke: If you understand succession ecology, you will understand that there’s no way a plant or animal alone can be responsible for the way it behaves. Invasion is only possible in the context of a certain kind of ecosystem situation. The first cause of succession is the availability of a site or niche. If there’s no site or niche available, no invasion can occur…. If invasion is not succession then what the hell is it? [...] most plants that are considered invasive are disturbance adapted species. (original link) [...]

By: Getting Intimate With My Weeds [Casaubon's Book] « Random Information

Getting Intimate With My Weeds [Casaubon's Book] « Random Information — Wed, 12 May 2010 18:06:31 +0000

[...] And yes, that has negative consequences as well – watching garlic mustard take over my forest floor sucks. Yes, we eat it. I've even been known to bundle it up and put it in my CSA baskets when I had them. But we can only eat so much garlic mustard . On the other hand, most of the forests that are being invaded are the kind of forest I have – not old growth natural forests, home to complex ecologies, but forests that are themselves in the process of complex succession. As permaculturist Dave Jacke puts it: [...]

By: Ken Asmus

Ken Asmus — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:35:58 +0000

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Once again we are war with weeds. Never do we fully appreciate those plants which spread beyond our gardens or fall out of our pant cuffs. To the ecologist today there is no biological integration and certainly nature has made a huge mistake by making them part of the whole. And of course humans can save the day by using herbicides and biocontrols. Look now ecologists have a new job-exterminator. The sand bar is now “infested with weeds.” The herbicide is called Habitat. It sounds so good. As we busy managing the world of vegetation like its 1491 we don’t really want to know how nature benefits. We just know its invasive.

By: Rufino Osorio

Rufino Osorio — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:52:11 +0000

Hello Caroline,

If you look up the words “anthropomorphic” and “opportunist,” you will see that calling a plant an “opportunist” is as much an example of anthropomorphism as is calling it “invasive.”

David got it wrong, most invasive pest plants are not particularly disturbance adapted. The association of invasive pest plants with disturbed areas is closely tied to propagule pressure. In the early stages of ecological invasion, pest plant propagules are more commonly found in disturbed areas because it is to such areas that they can most easily spread from our gardens. As the population increases and massive numbers of propagules are produced, many pest plants can quite readily invade pristine, undisturbed natural habitats. Indeed, many pest plants are pest plants specifically because they are NOT disturbance adapted and because they indeterminately persist long after any traces of disturbance are gone.

You can take your yard back from the Norway maples, multiflora roses, and Japanese barberries without compromising privacy and costing a small fortune. Just do it slowly and a square foot at a time…that’s how Rome was built and how an “endless and inexhaustible” prairie was turned into fields of corn and soybeans.

And finally, I must ask, do you *really* love bluebirds?

By: Partnership limits invasive species & promotes natives « Earth Friendly Gardening

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 21:14:44 +0000

[...] and summer. I think it’s an interesting and positive development in light of our recent discussion on how the “green industry” should deal with invasive [...]

By: Caroline Brown

Caroline Brown — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:49:35 +0000

Hi Daniel — I read that poison ivy spreads more as the climate warms, so that’s a good example of what you;re talking about. I hope that some of the natives can evolve to be more hardy as the climate inevitably changes so the world isn’t covered in poison ivy and other such invasives.

Hi Frank, agreed–I think we’re the culprit for most our invasive species problems. The perils of globalism, global capitalism, whatever you want to call it, I guess…..

By: Caroline Brown

Caroline Brown — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:43:52 +0000

Ginger, good point about growers–I had not thought much about them and how their businesses would be hurt by this. I’d like to find out what the “green industry’s” position on this is.

there is a list at the website for the RI Natural History Survey’s initiative called the Rhode Island Invasive Species Council: http://odonata.edc.uri.edu/cgi-bin/page.cgi/?page=invasive_list
It classifies plants in different ways, like widespread & invasive, restricted & invasive, invasive in other areas but not RI yet, etc. They stress the list has no legal merit–just informational.

FF — agree with you about the problem at the national big box nurseries–I suppose they can’t (or don’t want to) have regional strategies. Maybe it’s just too much science for them to have to figure out what’s invasive in every ecosystem where they have stores. That being said, what’s up with the local nurseries with good reputations that sell euonymus by the boatload every year?

I think I’ve run out of space, I’ll continue in a second comment.

By: frankwinters

frankwinters — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:58:13 +0000

In New England we suffer from many years of civilization and farming from suburbanization and urbanization. Our land is not natural in many respects. Some of the invasives where brought to us by horticulturalists and some hitch hiked. We don’t like them (sometimes we do sometimes we don’t) when they squeeze out other plant life. But in many cases ‘we’ introduced them. Let’s be careful about how we go about controlling them. Remember the fable of the town that had too many mice — cats to deal with mice, then dogs, then lions, then elephants —- back to mice!!