Re: Seed swaps

**Conrad Richter conrad@richters.com>**

> From: "Peter Loewer" <thewildgardener@earthlink.net>
> Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 7:14:45 -0400
> 
> I'm all for damning the government and the USDA but when it comes to
> kudzu it was commercial interests--mainly the turn of the Ninteenth
> Century railroad barons that brought it into the south as a cheap
> control to erosion when slicing track pathways through the mountians.
> And it was Jackson-Perkins who brought us the multiflora rose,
> convincing Americans in full-color ads in magazines like Horticulture
> that a rose hedge was a perfect privacy wall that not only protected
> but flowered. PL
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From:  
> Sent: 4/28/02 7:51:14 AM 
> 
> One of the many ironies of the government's cracking down on plant
> imports to protect us all is that some of the worst thugs in town are
> those that were imported and promoted and even subsidized by
> government agencies.  I'm talking about the obvious ones like
> multiflora rose, kudzu and crown vetch, but I'd bet there are more I
> don't know about. Not that commercial horticulture's hands are squeaky
> clean (Lythrum, Miscanthus et al), but the legislative approach is a
> definite pot kettle situation. 
> 
> JF

Logic dictates that commercial horticulture had to have had something to
do with the influx of some species in North America over the past
centuries.  But I think we ought to be careful laying blame solely on
horticulture in the case of Lythrum.  From my research on this species
it appears that ballast water from ships plying the St. Lawrence
waterway hundreds of years ago is responsible for the initial
establishment and spread of Lythrum.  Ballast water was picked up in
Europe where Lythrum is endemic and then dumped as the ships negotiated
the shallower freshwater waterway.  We talking about longtime, repeated,
and massive transfers of seed loads.  This happened long enough ago that
the effect of migratory birds and animals probably had a lot to do with
the subsequent spread of Lythrum from the Great Lakes region. 

Because Lythrum is so often cited as an example of the damage invasives
can wreak on the North American ecosystem, I find it useful to point out
that the logic doesn't conclusively support the "clean list" thesis that
gardeners and commercial horticulture are mainly to blame for invasives
-- not in this case at least.  

Conrad Richter

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