A decade or so ago I learned about a flowering plant called Purple Loosestrife, with colorful blooms that gardeners had been planting. Loosestrife took off like a grass fire and spread everywhere, choking out natural vegetation. When I learned about it I was shocked, because some friends had given us a plant and it vigorously growing in our flower garden.
I pulled the Loosestrife out and dug out the roots, making sure that I destroyed it. I hate invasive weeds and certainly didn’t want to be responsible for spreading it.
However, now it looks like we are responsible for spreading some invasive plants, not Loosestrife, but certainly a couple of others. The photo above shows one of them: Batchelor Buttons. We had a couple of those plants in our flower garden, and now they are spreading everywhere. The photo above show them growing in a grove of trees beside our yard. We didn’t plant them there, they magically appeared. The patch is very prolific and thick, and at this point, unstoppable. I have found sprouts of Batchelor Buttons trying to grow in my greenhouse.
Another invasive plant that we had planted in a flower garden and has now gone out on its own is Goutweed. We probably should have clued in with part of its name being “weed” that maybe we shouldn’t plant it, but it had decorative foliage, grew nicely in the shade, and was being sold a plant store, so without giving it a thought, we bought it and were very happy with it growing in some of our shady flower gardens.
The photo below shows Goutweed now growing on its own, in the woods. Again, we didn’t plant it there, it just somehow spread, and it is now taking over areas where native plants once grew.
These, like other invasive plants, grow so vigorously because they don’t seem to have any natural enemies or anything that will eat them. I feel really bad about our role in their spreading, but certainly the plant store trade that sell them to unknowing gardeners hold responsibility and a huge part of the blame. We would not have planted these pest plants, had we known how invasive they were.
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