Meadow sage as a weed in Washington state
- Subject: Meadow sage as a weed in Washington state
- From: R* F* D*
- Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:24:16 -0400 (EDT)
I just did a search in Google for Salvia + "noxious weed" and came up with
this site:
http://www.wa.gov/agr/weedboard/weed_info/meadowclary.html
There are 253 hits on this topic. This one was enough.
This bulletin seems to me to be alarmist even for S. sclarea. The bulletin
definitely reflects and promotes ignorance: Salvia pratensis is NOT related
to Salvia sclarea! And sclarea certainly has been planted more frequently
than aethiopis and not naturalized. Empirically, the analysis applied to
the bulletin qualifies as a bad WAG (wild-assed guess).
If this paucity of data is going to result in banning these plants across
ALL of the United States, we will have a lot of trouble. I was told that
during a conference, Faith Campbell claimed it is better to err on the side
of caution and ban a plant for the whole country if it shows bad behavior in
one section. Also, the program was not going to be funded sufficiently to
break the country into sections and have the plants tested for each area.
So ignorance will be multiplied before being applied! Why aren't data bases
containing researched and checked KNOWN information on noxious weeds needed
for this project being funded and developed? Who is going to decide what
the criteria for declaring a plant a noxious weed, and are standards going
to be applied evenly and fairly?
Why has a risk assessment decision tree for noxious weeds not been
developed? Again, an anology with industrial chemicals: before a potential
candidate is allowed to be put into a synthesis program, it is run through
this instrument, using criteria developed by the flavor and fragrance,
agrochemical, and pharmaceutical industry. Since Monsanto and Amgen or some
other bioengineering companies have members on the advisory board for NISC,
why haven't they offered this suggestion?
Richard F. Dufresne
313 Spur Road
Greensboro, North Carolina 27406 USA
336-674-3105
World of Salvias: http://www.eclectasy.com/gallery_of_salvias/index.htm
Salvia email list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Salvia
