Re: Re: Invasive Plants

**Horticulture Ventures hortventures@cox.net>**

Conrad,

I can always tell when the TV ratings sweeps week has arrived. The 
promos use high attention getting phrases that are designed to be 
provocative and hold the viewing audience for the "news story" later in 
the show. Generally the piece has very little to do with the "teaser".

It seems to me that we are in danger of exaggeration of a problem when 
we use the term "invasive", especially after Sept. 11's attacks.
Plants lack the ability to attack the environment. Giving them human 
intent is misleading. True, some may be very aggressive in their 
adaptation and replace less competitive species. I am not disagreeing 
that some very unfortunate introductions of exotic species have 
occurred. However, we should reserve our energies to specific targeted 
species and not use a shotgun approach.

There are many plants that readily reseed in our gardens and can produce 
unwanted new generations of plants in some climate zones. Some gardeners 
may find a limited amount of this reseeding to be desirable and easy to 
control via weeding and transplanting Terms such as "Readily self sows" 
and "Aggressive self seeder" would be better used than "Invasive". The 
danger is that if we cry wolf too often to describe these types of 
plants, when we need to alert the public - they will have become 
desensitized to the issue.

Claude sweet
San Diego, CA

Conrad Richter wrote:

>My big worry is that the dividing line between "good" and "bad" is going
>to be put simplemindedly at whether or not a plant can reseed itself or
>otherwise spread vegetatively.  Why do I think that might happen? 
>Because who has the resources to put the dividing line anywhere else? 
>To decide whether a plant with the ability to escape is actually going
>to become a problem (vs. those that won't) is a daunting exercise. 
>
>Conrad Richter
>
>

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