Invasive Plants: Accepting Globalization

Call me irresponsible. When I heard about yet another “Invasive Plants in the Landscape” conference, my first thought was “How depressing.”

And it’s not that I don’t care that our fields and forests are being ravaged by garlic mustard and knapweed, I tried to explain to my friends the other evening at dinner. But, one insisted, we make the natural world a better place by reclaiming patches in backyards all over the region. True. But … Let me see if I can do a better job.

Garlic mustard, by the way, is edible!

I am, in fact, a tackle-any-job kind of girl. For years I’ve pulled garlic mustard and greater celandine at the optimum time, and hacked English ivy from tree trunks before it had a chance to become a bearer of berries. I’ve refrained from planting burning bush even though its brilliant and long-lasting color is unmatched by more responsible choices. I still do these things in my own garden, because I know what will happen if I don’t. For years I have cared, fretted, and educated myself about the seed-spreading cycles and eco-niches of culprits like stilt grass and purple loosestrife. But the realization that has crept over me and overtaken my zeal is this: I could pull invasive plants from roadsides gone wild every Saturday all year long, and they would proliferate as soon as I took a break. Inevitably, we fall behind. As Emma Marris put it in her book, Rambunctious Garden, "A historically faithful ecosystem is necessarily a heavily managed ecosystem." Creating a native landscape can be seen as a way that we busy ourselves to further an impossible goal: putting the natural world to rights.

As we toil away, making little patches better places for pollinators and symbiotic organisms, corn fields and deciduous forests alike continue to be transformed into commercial and industrial districts by those who think of soil as something to be moved out of the way so concrete can be poured. We must “spur the economy;” we must “speed up economic growth,” we are told daily by politicians. Growth has saved us in the past. Growth will make us happy. The U.S. GDP rose a remarkable 3.4% a year for 100 years—up until 1980. Thus, the American Dream. All we need to do is produce more—more natural gas, more refined oil, more corn—and we will be saved again (with no new taxes!). 

Polllinators love native plants, and foxglove, too.

It’s time we wrap our heads around an ecological truth: perpetual growth is impossible. When the deer populations exceed the carrying capacity of the land, we moan about the effect on forest regeneration. When mosquitoes flourish we spray the infestation. When garlic mustard rosettes stretch into flowering stalks, and spit out their copious seeds, we fund studies that determine the survival percentages of ginseng. And yet, we exclude our own species from the rules that the science of ecology has established, and on those infrequent occasions when we act to limit our impacts on other species, it is with the stipulation that economic growth will continue unimpeded. Always and forever.

Despite all good intentions of leading a meaningful and intentional life, we are spending increasing amounts of time in climate-controlled boxes, and packing them with more and “better” stuff. We work and work, for if we take a break, the bills will proliferate. We will fall behind. We spend less and less time in nature, and more on electronic devices. We (and I include myself in this) are hopelessly goal-oriented—which seems, more and more as I grow older and (hopefully) wiser, a path to inevitable dissatisfaction. 

There is one benefit to pulling garlic mustard, so long as we have no illusions that we can permanently repair the so-called damage, and that is that it gets us outside. Every time a rosette is yanked out by the roots, someone has to stoop, and observe the forest floor. It’s likely that the puller may look up, and watch the way the wispy clouds move across the blue sky, and listen to the singing of the robin or the popping of peppergrass seedpods, and think, I am doing something good for the environment, and I feel good. But the truth is, the best thing that is being done for the environment is that people are being given a reason to leave their climate-controlled boxes, a reason to step outside, a reason to care. 

Face it: Life is messy. Globalization is a done deal. We are going to have to learn, somehow, to love our neighbors. The wild things will work it out for themselves with little or no help from us, thank-you-very-much. They’ll have to. 

And there are, I believe, better ways to spend Saturday mornings than acting as judge and executioner of aliens that have crept into our country, our wild spaces—better for the earth and better for us. I would rather see people thrill to the sight of thousands of butterflies sipping nectar from purple loosestrife than look at the scene with consternation and a sense of duty. I would rather see them step into the whirl and become enveloped by the buzzing of bees, notice the astonishing diversity that is to be found on a single plant. If people, young and old, were to spend time joyfully learning the world outside their boxes and truly feeling the life in the soil that lies beneath the soles of their shoes, they might experience a kinship with the other organisms that we share our space with. Maybe they will see that a little goal-free time offers rewards that can’t be gained from the accumulation of stuff. Maybe they will grow up to be politicians. Maybe they will understand that never-ending economic growth is not the path to happiness—or even a desirable thing.  

Did you know Japanese hops causes dermatitis when you pull it?

So yes, I’m done wringing my hands over the presence of Japanese hops and European garlic mustard in the wilds—and it’s not because I don’t care that natives are losing their niches. I care a lot. But my American Dream has taken on a different perspective. I believe that if we can succeed in getting Inside People out, into nature, we might, as a culture, stand a chance of remembering that More (to paraphrase Bill McKibben) is not what we need. We need to value the joy that comes from getting to know the non-human world. Some things are beyond our control. Others, starting with our relationship with nature in this period of our species’ “progress,” are fixable.  

Sterile Plants: All-season Bloomers

A lot of the plants in my garden this year have something in common: they cannot bear young. 

Lobularia 'Blushing Princess': no seeds but lots of syrphid flies!

One might say it’s a triploid revolution!

But let’s start at the beginning.

The flower exists for one purpose—to attract pollinators. Once its powdery pollen is transported by bee, moth, beetle, or some other vehicle to the ovule of another flower, its function is finished. Seeds form. Eventually, baby plants germinate. So as the summer wears on and flowers turn to seeds, the plant has less and less incentive to make more flowers. Unless, of course, some manipulative gardener beheads the dying blooms. 

But what tedium, what fussiness! 

Cleome 'Seniorita Blanca' in late August

How fortunate for the lover of all-season color that plant breeders have stepped in. What! you say? Breeders “play god” and manipulate plants just so we can enjoy cleome that doesn’t become a spidery tower of swaying seedpods, and sweet alyssum that doesn’t get ugly in August? What’s next—tomatoes that don’t rot?  

Well, maybe … but that’s another story.

Back to the point – how, and why, does a scientist make a flower that will not fulfill its function? 

The answer to how is varied and complicated. Why is a little more straightforward. Take lantana, a beautiful flower that is benign in cold-winter regions like Pennsylvania, but a menace in the south. In fact, it’s one of the top 10 weedy species of the world. And its chromosomes are to blame.

Lantana 'Luscious Berry Blend' makes no seeds.

Many organisms (us, for instance) are diploids, meaning we have two complete sets of chromosomes, one from mom and one from dad. Plants often have multiple sets. Lantana can have two, three, four, five, or even six sets of chromosomes. Those with even numbers of sets are fertile (sometimes very fertile), and those with odd numbers are largely sterile. Combine a plant with two sets (a diploid) with one with four (a tetraploid) and the result is: ta da, a sterile triploid! It will start to form seeds but they will never become blackberry-like and fertile. 

Selling sterile plants will not undo the damage caused by the rude tetraploids let loose in warm climates, but it will at least allow gardeners to plant lantana with a clear conscience. And non-seedmaking plants bloom and bloom. Yes, I am aware that lantana berries are ornamental. This, I suspect, is a rationalization that will be handily tossed when the juicy fruits are absent. 

Hibiscus 'Blue Chiffon': blooming itself silly.

Other sterile or mostly sterile plants in my garden are ‘Lilac Chip’ buddleia, ‘Seniorita Blanca’ cleome, ‘Blushing Princess’ sweet alyssum, ‘Diana’ rose-of Sharon (my ‘Blue Chiffon’ rose-of-Sharon is not a triploid but is blooming itself silly nonetheless). Some of my seed-free plants are triploids, others are the sterile hybrids of two different species. 

Burning bush triploids will be available in four to five years, says breeder Yi Li of the University of Connecticut. And other good versions of bad troublemakers are on the way. Scientists are working on making impotent Norway maples, barberries, privets, and callery pears so that they won’t wreak havoc on the few natural areas that have not yet been compromised. 

From the BIG perspective, creating a cleome or sweet alyssum that blooms all summer seems a monumentally trivial achievement. And the self-serving aspect—no self-sown seedlings means more sales—is not lost on me. Scientists working on safe-to-plant versions of invasive plants are providing gardeners with guilt-free alternatives. A sterile burning bush, however, will do little to save the earth. 

But in the evenings, when I revel in the exponential multiplication of the blooms (that still, by the way, attract scores of pollinators), and enjoy the sweet scents, I am happy that breeders tinker with odd-numbered ploidy.  

Now if they would just start working on squash bugs ….

Garlic Mustard Day!

Pulling garlic mustard always inspires me. 

Today’s inspiration is, on so many levels, brilliant. I propose that we declare a regional garlic mustard holiday! Imagine watching, watching, watching … then, when the flowers begin to flash along the roadsides but the seeds are still a few days away from causing mayhem, everyone shall take the day off to pull the troublemakers out by the roots. And, clip, clip, off with their heads—just for insurance. And spite. Side by side, bankers and second-graders, mechanics and professors, will find satisfaction and community in yanking out the aliens that (with sinister intent, I suspect) alter soil chemistry and produce prodigious numbers of offspring. At the end of the rewarding session garlic mustard carcasses will lie severed and wilting, a generation thwarted. 

 

And the beauty of it is, the date of the holiday is to be determined by those who have the most to gain from it: school children. They will be the watchers of the roadsides. They will observe the elongation of the second-year rosettes, and the formation of the four-petaled flowers. “Soon, soon,” they will tell each other. “See? The maple leaves are beginning to open … that’s a sign! And look, the dandelions are blooming.” 

Not only will the understory be made safe for bloodroot and Jack-in-the-pulpit, but children will have a good solid reason to observe what’s going on outdoors. Shall we declare an arbitrator? Or just determine that when the peony buds are the size of peas, the time is right, and allow the twitter-vine to determine that this is the day. 

Allee-allee-out-free! 

Yes, I realize that success would doom the holiday, but I have faith that children will not let that happen. They’ll figure it out, and “forget” a patch, leaving it to spew out next year’s bounty. 

And there are those, to be sure, who will stand up for the right of garlic mustard to flourish; who will bemoan a world without garlic mustard pesto. I say, let them eat groundhogs! 

And solve another garden problem.

Pennycress: Superhero or Salad?

When is a weed no longer a weed? 

When it becomes the best option for making diesel fuel, say researchers in Peoria. We can thank the Agricultural Research Service for discovering that a pesky little mustard-family spring weed commonly known as field pennycress, or, not so commonly, as Thlaspi arvense, produces seeds that are 36% oil and can make truck engines rev and oil furnaces rumble.

Who knew?

And isn’t it convenient that when corn and soybeans are growing, pennycress is sleeping … and vice versa. 

I wish I could tell you that this pervasive garden pest offers the answer to the current economic slump and our dependence on the tenuous good will of our global neighbors in the Middle East. We could potentially grow 8 billion gallons of biodiesel without plowing any additional acreage. This is more than a drop in the bucket … it’s closer to a splash in the pail. In other words, even though pennycress can be grown in the off-season, even though it can be efficiently aerial-seeded leaving behind neither tractor ridges nor clouds of dust, even though it grows “like a weed” with no assistance from herbicides or pesticides, it is not the answer. It’s an answer for a biofuel industry that is struggling to meet the EPA’s required Renewable Fuels Standard without bumping up the prices of corn and soybeans and, in turn, everything else. Best case scenario: pennycress will help diesel fuel blends go from 1-5% bio- up to 20% bio-diesel, and greenhouse gas emissions will hold steady. As will the price of soda. But we’ll just consider that an adverse reaction.

But ... we need to do better than hold steady. In our stuff-stuffed world, where gadgets and fashions must travel from China to the freight depots to the diesel-fueled tractor-trailers to the Walmarts to our closets and rented storage facilities, we need to think about reaching that inner place where enough stuff is enough. 

So when is a weed no longer a weed? Turns out field pennycress is edible, as is another pesky little mustard-family spring weed commonly known as bittercress, or, not so commonly, as Cardamine hirsuta. 

There’s no down side to free salad!

Miscanthus in Bondage

I have to say that I have outgrown my love affair with the lovely Miss Canthus Sinensis.

She (we’ll just call her Maidenhair) is beautiful in youth, but, to be perfectly blunt, does not age well. You may think me shallow, but I have moved on to trimmer, more genteel subjects—Cally Magrostis, for example, and Pani Cum. For one thing, Maidenhair doubles in breadth each year. Just take a moment to absorb the implications of this. Those who have naively invited her into their lives have several options, none of which is appealing. Murder is one. Corseting (demonstrated above) is another. As you can see this just makes her look cheap.

Some who are desperate to rein in her rowdy nature resort to fencing her in, and then trimming the wildness away thus depriving her of both freedom and personality. I hate this. Dividing and conquering is nearly impossible. She has very deep roots and will stand her ground until you either admit defeat, or decide that maybe offspring are not in your best interest anyway.

But, observe the consequences when she is left to her own behavior. Not a pretty sight.




If you are wondering if I have the answer I will keep you waiting no longer. It is imperfect, but will allow the gentle in spirit to permit Maidenhair to keep her dignity. You can think of it as a grapefruit diet for grasses, but truth be told it is more like amputation. If your Maiden has become heartless (never a good thing, but better than a similar condition: rotten at the core) in her mature years, you can offer her a heart transplant. This is a lengthy operation, and requires persistence and diligence, though not much skill. The emptiness where once you placed an innocent little grass plant will become one edge of your revitalized Maiden. Decide which edge, grab a satisfying handful of grass, and bind it. Then cut away everything else. Be absolutely merciless, leaving but a stubble. Chop the disembodied parts into pieces to use as mulch, covering the stubble as deeply as possible to deprive it of sunlight. You will need to repeat this about three times during the season, and probably at least once the following year. But your mission, to make Maidenhair young once more, will have been accomplished. I warn you though, she will grow fat and old again.

It’s what she does.

This sidewalk will soon become a walk-beside.

Shy Violets? Not So Much!

The other violet flower

Last year, at Morven Museum, we had an infestation of one of the worst historic-garden pests I know: archeologists! I do realize that it's extremely important to make absolutely certain there's no crockery in a spot that will, ultimately, be built upon, and therefore it's necessary to dig holes of grave-like proportions. But in the process of determining that there were in fact no buried treasures, living plants were murdered and soil was up-ended. That is, what had been down was turned up and what was up is now down. Curiously this caused an explosion of violets in spring. The long-buried caches of seeds (I'm guessing) were brought to the surface and reveled so in their first exposure to sunlight after decades of darkness that they all germinated. I can understand this reaction. From past experience with violets I know what this means. Either I learn to love my new woodland groundcover--and I do love the delicate nodding flowers--or I harden my heart and dig them out, roots and all. Halfway measures will not work. And I'll tell you why.

There are violets you see, and violets you don't see. Where stem meets soil, the unseen flowers lurk. Dig a violet up and you'll find what looks like a bud, but is actually a flower, a cleistogamous flower, the kind that produces viable seed without ever opening and with no help from pollinators. And, as if that's not enough of a procreative advantage, violet seeds have a sugar-rich appendage called an elaiosome that is so appetizing to ants that they drag the seeds home to the safety of their nests, eat the good part, and leave the rest to germinate in a medium made rich from their waste. Meanwhile, above ground, the violet flowers we know and love form seed pods that burst when ripe, catapulting the seeds in all directions.

Triple advantage: Violets.

Triple nuisance: Gardeners.

We may as well just learn to get along with these ubiquitous volunteers. Pulling them out always sets off a bout of guilt anyway ...

I Love You Grandpa Ott … But We’re Through!

I just can’t keep up with you anymore. You were climbing Baptist John Ott’s hedges when I was just learning to crawl and you haven’t slowed down, not one little bit. You’re outrunning me, Grandpa. You’ve impudently out-muscled Heavenly Blue, your elder by 50 years, crawled all over William Forsyth’s namesake (a dangerous move … if his boss King George II was still alive he would banish you as he did his very own son!), and now, Grandpa, you have the audacity to clamber onto sweet Carmelita.

It is not without sadness that I rip every one of your 10,000 hearts from my garden. There was a time when we were friends, no, more than friends. I loved waking up to your lively purple presence, and watching you slowly fold your red-violet streaks out of view each evening. I loved it when you dominated my brick wall, and leaned happily on my weathered wood fence. But I must be frank, Grandpa. You’re just too much! From now on I’d appreciate it you would just sow your progeny on my neighbor’s side of the fence. She still finds your looks appealing, your vigor exciting. She doesn’t know you like I do.

I mean it Grandpa! I don’t even want to see the whites of your eyes peering through the slats!