Re: I. pseudacarus
- Subject: Re: I. pseudacarus
- From: R* B*
- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 11:43:56 -0600
- Content-Disposition: inline
From: "Rodney Barton" <rbarton@hsc.unt.edu>
> Bill Shear said.
>I suspect that the dangers of pseudacorus becoming invasive decrease as one
>moves south, into less favorable territory for, perhaps, seed germination.
>Pseudacorus has been around and about New England for centuries, with no
>comments (so far as I know--which isn't very far) on its invasiveness. In
>Texas it would no more be an alien weed than would versicolor.
I. pseudacorus will hardly grow for me, but I know of two areas in Texas where I. pseudacorus deserves to be called a weed.
The first is the planting in the pond at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens that was previously mentioned. I think it DOES demonstrate that pseudacorus can be quite invasive. The overflow from this pond runs into a network of creeks. The creeks are FULL of pseudacorus. I don't know how long this took, but new seedlings can be found all along in the network. The spread seems to stop because the irises in the network are heavily shaded and don't bloom much, if any, and therefore don't send seeds further down stream. Large areas around the pond are ocassionally cleared but the irises return. Again new seedlings can be seen on the banks of the pond.
The second area is Lake Austin. The shores of this lake are covered in I. pseudacorus. I'm talking miles of shore line! I don't know the history there, but it's hard to imagine that all these irises were intentionally planted.
I don't believe anyone needs to worry about about planting I. pseudacorus in their garden or stock pond, but I would be very careful about planting it where seeds could be easily washed into natural waterways.
Rodney Barton
rbarton@hsc.unt.edu
Hickory Creek, (North Central) Texas, USA
Zone 7/8, typical temp range 15 - 105 F (-9 - 41 C)
AIS, SIGNA, SPCNI, SLI, Iris-talk
North American Native Iris Web Page:
http://molly.hsc.unt.edu/~rbarton/Iris/NANI.html
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