Random plant event: Breynia disticha

I now have three Breynias in the house: the original, and two (barely) smaller plants from cuttings of the original. If they were easier to propagate from cuttings, I would have even more than that, because I like them,¹ but a lot of cuttings fail. (Cutting failure is a good thing in this particular case, though, because they get big quickly, and if all the cuttings had been successful, we would probably have had to give them all their own room.)

I happened to notice a couple months ago that the original Breynia had decided to bloom. The flowers are small and inconspicuous, to the point where although I know I've seen them once before,² I could easily believe that my plants have flowered several other times without me noticing.

This has no real practical application to anything -- I doubt I could pollinate them successfully. Nor is it particularly decorative, appealingly fragrant, or otherwise desirable. But it is news, technically, in that it is something that has happened. So make of that what you will.

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¹ They're easy, except that they always seem to need water. With a lot of plants, you could just move the plant up to a larger pot and get some relief, but Breynia roots fill any additional room they get almost instantaneously. So I've learned to just check for wilting more often, and water them out of turn if they need it.
Otherwise, Breynia is a good plant for me: not overly demanding of light, not prone to bugs (so far, though there have been brief minor spider mite infestations), copes well with indoor humidity and temperature. It's not my favorite plant or anything, but I like it well enough to have three of them.
If you live in a more tropical climate, be advised that Breynia disticha will propagate itself throughout your yard/garden, as well as those of your neighbors. If you live in Florida or Hawaii, in particular, you should not be growing Breynias outdoors. Not that it's going to bring back the native ecosystems, but you can at least try not to make things worse.
As houseplants, obviously, the damage to the ecosystem was done when the house was built, so grow whatever you want, just keep it inside.
² Those photos are better than these photos, if you care.

Random plant event: Senecio mikanioides

I've never tried growing Senecio mikanioides, indoors or out, but I do occasionally see people talking about doing so (mostly in books). The flowers aren't anything special to look at --


-- but I was struck by the fragrance, which was fairly strong and pleasant. (If memory serves, it was in the jasmine / gardenia neighborhood, but this was a while ago, so I may be misremembering. Or mis-describing.) The fragrance is honored by the new name, Delairea odorata: as I have just gotten it into my head that it's spelled mikanioides instead of mikanoides, I'm not going to give the old name up yet. (C'mon, taxonomists -- meet me halfway at least, eh?)

It's also an invasive species in places where winters are mild. Apparently it's particularly bad in California and Australia. (One source says Montana as well, which confuses me a bit, since Montana is not known for balmy winters.) It doesn't appear to be a serious problem elsewhere so far, though the Mediterranean coast, the Atlantic coast of the U.S., southeast England, and similar climates ought to keep a look out. I don't see the appeal of the foliage anyway:


But I could understand being tempted by the flowers' fragrance, I suppose. Anybody out there ever grown it indoors? Is it easy to keep alive and/or bring into flower? Would I have to have direct sun? I can't buy the plant in the photo, for . . . reasons, but I see it for sale once in a while around here in the spring, so if I should get one, now's the time to tell me.

If it helps with the recommendation: I've had a Senecio macroglossus for quite a while and have decided that it's probably not worth my time, even if it doesn't actually die.

Incredible Hulk (Schefflera actinophylla)

First off, there are three commonly-grown Schefflera species, and this profile is only about one of them. I've profiled Schefflera elegantissima already, and it's hard to confuse for the other two, but the other two are mistaken for one another on-line a lot.

This makes no sense to me, because they're just as easy to tell apart: if the leaflets are longer than 4 or 5 inches (10-13 cm), it's a S. actinophylla, the subject of this profile. If the leaflets are shorter than 4 or 5 inches, it's S. arboricola, which is not. I mean, there are other differences, and there is some overlap when talking about very large arboricolas or very young actinophyllas, but that's generally enough to make the determination.¹

Like, this one is pretty obviously an actinophylla. Photo credit: anonymous PATSP photo donor.
S. arboricola is not a dwarf variety of S. actinophylla, though a surprisingly large number of people seem to think it is.

Care for arboricola resembles that of actinophylla, but there are enough differences that I will profile them separately. I thought it was important to get this out of the way first, lest someone read through the whole profile thinking I'm talking about their plant, only to realize that they have an arboricola.

So.

I only remember watching "The Incredible Hulk" on TV once, at someone else's house, and I don't think I was paying very close attention at the time, because being at someone else's house was more interesting than watching TV. I know the basic story anyway, though: unassuming physicist Bruce Banner is exposed to a huge dose of gamma radiation, and shortly thereafter, when in the throes of strong emotions like rage, finds himself transforming into a large, muscular, inarticulate monster with terrible hair. (Sort of like a green Steven Seagal, but more handsome.)

Photo via Starts With a Bang; original source not identified.
In the TV show's credits, says Wikipedia, Bruce Banner is quoted as saying, "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry," which is a widespread enough quote that I knew of it for a long time before I had any idea where it came from.² Schefflera actinophylla hasn't been irradiated, but it is huge and green, and you wouldn't like it when it's angry, either.

The common names for Schefflera actinophylla³ follow the plan [octopus or umbrella] + [tree or plant], with "umbrella plant" being the one most familiar to me personally. A lot of people apparently call them "Australian ivy-palm," of all things: I'd never heard that name before I started researching.

"Australian ivy-palm" is also only 33% correct. Schefflera actinophylla is from Australia and New Guinea, specifically the northern part of Queensland, Australia, north of the Tropic of Capricorn. This isn't an official, documented, scientific map, but it's the general neighborhood we're talking about, based on the descriptions I found of the range:

Image from the CIA Factbook (.pdf file), with modifications.
So it is Australian. It's not an ivy or a palm, though.⁴

Schefflera actinophylla was introduced to Hawaii in 1900 and Florida in 1927 as an ornamental. Its relative hardiness (in zone 10 and 11), quick growth, shiny foliage, and attractiveness to birds led to its being widely planted. The plants produce small red flowers, mostly in summer to early fall, in clusters shaped like the arms of an octopus or the ribs of an umbrella. Birds like to drink the nectar from the flowers.⁵ The fruit is inedible to humans but spread by birds.

Image credit: mauroguanandi, via Wikimedia Commons.
So we've got a fast-growing tree that produces large amounts of fruits that birds like eating. You maybe see where this is going.

Yup, it's another invasive species. It shades out native species by growing extremely fast; it can also begin life as an epiphyte and overgrow its host tree quickly enough to kill it.⁶ The bigger problem for people who plant them, though, is that the plants are extremely destructive on small scales too, and people who have umbrella trees planted in their yards often find themselves wishing they didn't. Not only do they (the trees) drop leaves more or less constantly, but they'll also shade out and kill anything planted near them, the roots tear up driveways, raise and break plumbing and gas lines, push over walls, smash tiled courtyards, crush foundations, ruin sprinkler systems, and just generally cause mayhem. ("HULK SMASH!") According to the commenters at davesgarden.com, this doesn't seem to be as big of a problem in California as it is in Hawaii or Florida. It could be that the Californian commenters at davesgarden.com are unobservant, but it could also be the case that humidity is an important factor in how quickly the roots grow. I don't have enough information to make that call; I just know that California doesn't appear to have a problem with invasive, rampaging Scheffleras.

The plants can also, of course, regenerate from roots. This doesn't have much application to indoor growing, or even large-scale production, but it very much applies if you have a 40-foot Schefflera⁷ trying to crack open your home's foundation and pump gas in. You do have to get all the roots.

Florida has, of course, put umbrella tree on its do-not-plant list, but nurseries in Florida were still selling it as of 2002, and when I worked at the garden center in 2007-09, we were getting our Scheffleras from suppliers in Florida. So one senses, perhaps, a less-than-sweeping commitment to evict scheffs from the state. One official, Dan Thayer (Director of the Vegetation Management Division of South Florida), made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that perhaps the way to turn things around would be to spread rumors about the plant, specifically that it attracts encephalitis-carrying mosquitoes, and hope that public panic would do the rest. (Which is when I decided that I liked Dan Thayer, the Director of the Vegetation Management Division of South Florida.) Scheffleras in fact don't attract encephalitis-carrying mosquitoes, or any other kind of mosquitoes, but hey: if it'll help Florida ecosystems and homeowners, I'm willing to reinforce the association in people's minds.

Image: Tropical Plant Pictures.
Mother Nature is certainly not going to do anything about the situation. Fire will kill scheffs sometimes, but it's not a guaranteed fix. Hurricane Andrew produced wind speeds of 165 mph (265 kph) when it hit Florida in 1992, and about 85% of the Scheffleras survived just fine. Scheffs tolerate herbicides pretty well, and even when herbicides work, they generally have to be applied more than once. This is a strong plant.

Which is part of why they're so good indoors. Even with reduced light, low humidity, and confinement to a container, S. actinophylla is still vigorous, and generally pretty easy to care for, with just one major flaw.

My personal plant, October 2007. I think it's a 6-inch (15 cm) pot.
LIGHT: As a rule, more light is better, though I wouldn't put a scheff in a south or west window unless the window was partly obstructed or the placement absolutely necessary. (The reason will be explained in a few paragraphs.) My personal plant has been on shelves under fluorescent light for most of the time I've had it, which has been fine.

WATER: My experience has been that umbrella plants are very flexible about watering. Too much and the lowest leaves will yellow and drop; too little and the leaves wilt slightly,⁸ but they're less fussy about it than most other plants. I try to err on the side of dryness with mine, and water only when it's almost completely dry. I haven't seen it wilt, but I haven't been watching for that, either. Maybe it's subtle.

TEMPERATURE: The best situation indoors is to stay within 55-90F (13-32C), but S. actinophylla can manage temperatures outside that range under certain conditions. Established, large outdoor plants will lose their most exposed leaves at temperatures slightly above freezing (say around 37F/3C; different sources have different ideas about this), but the plant will still survive a light, brief freeze, regrowing what it's lost in short order. Whether a container-grown indoor plant could do the same, I couldn't say. I don't recommend trying to find out.

Hot temperatures may cause some temporary wilting, but scheffs can cope fine if they have enough water, and will pop back up once it cools off again.

My personal plant, July 2010. I think the pot here was 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter.
HUMIDITY: Not ordinarily a huge issue, though more moisture in the air is better.

PESTS: The main reason more moisture in the air is preferred is that spider mites loooooooove Scheffleras. Scheffs don't seem especially prone to other pests, but mites and scheffs go together like Ke$ha and autotune. This is the single biggest drawback to what would otherwise be a nearly-ideal indoor plant. Some varieties are supposed to be more mite-impervious than the species, which I'll talk about in a few paragraphs.

The best way to deal with spider mites on a Schefflera is to not buy plants that have them, and then keep the plant in a moist environment with good air circulation. I've had mites on my plant once in the three years I've had it, but it was one of those long, drawn-out infestations that never really got out of control or went away. (It might not have gone away still; I sprayed it with neem oil last summer, and didn't have problems with mites during the winter, but I don't expect to be completely mite-free, ever, because if there are mites in the house, they'll find it eventually.)

It was worse at work, because at work the heat was provided by gas heaters under the tables, so the plants were getting this constant flow of hot, dry air from underneath. Also it was a greenhouse, so there was hot sun at least some of the time as well, and if there's anything spider mites like more than Scheffleras, it's hot sun. (Which is why I wouldn't put one in a west or south window if there are other options.)

PROPAGATION: Commercial production is mostly by seed, which will germinate with about 80% success after three weeks barely covered in a moist, peaty medium. Several places on-line sell the seeds, if you want to go that route. Tissue culture is used for some cultivars.

Home propagation is generally by cuttings or air-layering. I haven't done either one for this plant, so I can't describe how to do it.

GROOMING: Actual grooming is mostly limited to removing the occasional dead leaf and dusting. They may eventually get too tall for the house, which is a problem you don't have with some plants, but I'm not actually sure what you're supposed to do about that.⁹ They do tend to get rootbound faster than you think they will, so it's important to keep up with repotting and check the roots at least once a year. The roots also have a tendency to shape themselves tightly to any irregularities in the pot surface, so if you plant yours in a fancy-shaped container, that curves in at the top or has lots of embossed designs, you may have to cut it apart or break it in order to repot, if you wait too long. (If you wait even longer than that, the plant may decide HULK SMASH and break the pot on its own.)

My personal plant, March 2011. 10-inch (25 cm) pot.
FEEDING: My plant grew okay when I wasn't feeding it at all, suddenly grew much larger and darker-green leaves when I started using the Osmocote (14-14-14 without trace elements), and didn't appear to change any when I switched to the Miracle Gro (which I think was 15-30-15 with trace elements). This more or less matches up with what Griffith says in Tropical Foliage Plants: A Grower's Guide.¹⁰

There are a few cultivars.

'Nova' is distinguished by the shape of the leaflets: instead of being rounded ovals, they're jagged and pointy. To my eye they look more like oak leaves, or like Schefflera elegantissima. (There's some question about whether 'Nova' is even S. actinophylla. From what I've seen, it's generally sold as such, though.) I couldn't find a free photo to use, but you can see a picture from Caldwell Nursery in Houston,¹¹ or check the page at davesgarden.com. I'm pretty sure someone commented about 'Nova' on PATSP at some point, but I couldn't locate the comment: I think they said something about 'Nova' being more cold-sensitive than other varieties of umbrella tree. And I assume there must be other problems with them as well, because I have yet to see one for sale around here, nor were they ever offered from our supplier when I worked at the garden center.

Variegated S. actinophyllas are rare, but they do exist. They have cream and green leaves, with reddish petioles. (Davesgarden.com has pictures.) One rarely sees them for sale because, according to Griffith, they're very prone to revert to green.

'Soleil' has chartreuse foliage and is said to prefer lower light than the other cultivars; I didn't find much information about it, though.

'Renegade,' 'Alpine' and 'Amate' are similar -- all have large, dark green, glossy leaves. However, 'Amate' has a wider habit; 'Renegade' is more columnar. I couldn't figure out what the big deal was about 'Alpine.' I've never seen a plant identified as 'Renegade,' but I have seen 'Amate;' this is probably because 'Amate' is supposed to be more resistant to fungal and bacterial leaf-spot diseases. (Plants with spotless leaves are obviously more sellable, and therefore more appealing to growers.) 'Amate' is also supposed to be more resistant to spider mites; the experience I had with it at work suggests that this claim may be overstated a bit, but maybe the plant just caught us at a bad moment.

Larger plant from the ex-job; this is probably a healthy 'Amate.'
Whatever variety you have, Schefflera actinophylla is easy to please under most indoor circumstances. They're long-lived indoors (30 years is not unheard of), and they're one of those plants that provides clear feedback about how it's doing: either it's getting huge, or it isn't. Just don't get it angry: watch for spider mites, and check it regularly to see if it needs to be repotted.

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Photo credits: Mine, except as otherwise noted in main text. You can tell the ones that aren't mine by the way they're not crappy. (Tough plant to photograph.)

REFERENCES:

General, outdoor, ecological:
USDA Forest Service
Plant of the Week
Missouri Botanical Garden
Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants
Miami-Dade County, Florida
The Lazy Gardener (Houston Chronicle)
Hawaiian Plants and Tropical Flowers
Master Gardener
Davesgarden.com
Wikipedia
Floridata.com
University of Florida Extension
Exploring the World of Trees
.Pdf about Schefflera in South Florida, written by Dan Thayer

Care:
Plant Care Guru (warning: bad spelling)
Denver Plants ('Amate' specifically)

Cultivars:
Tropical Gardens ('Renegade,' 'Alpine,' and 'Amate' photos)
Oglesby Plants International (description of 'Soleil,' 'Alpine')
Davesgarden.com ('Nova')
Davesgarden.com (variegated)

Propagation:
Success With Seed (Park Seed Co.)

¹ If it was sold as a bonsai, or variegated, it's most likely an arboricola. Actinophylla are virtually always solid green, and although it's theoretically possible for any tree to be grown as a bonsai, actinophylla's not grown that way often enough to show up in a google search. (I did find one person claiming that they grew actinophylla as a bonsai, but I'm inclined to think that they were mistaken about the species name.) When I decided that I wanted to get a S. actinophylla, it took me a long time to locate one that wasn't already a six-foot tall floor specimen, but we sold arboricolas in four-inch pots pretty much year-round.
Other differences: arboricola has thicker, more substantial leaflets, and the veins show up poorly or not at all when leaflets are held up to a strong light. Usually arboricola has more leaflets at a small size than actinophylla does, too: actinophylla tends not to have more than 5-6 leaflets per leaf until it gets really big, while arboricola can have 7-8 easy when it's still small enough to fit in a 4-inch (10 cm) pot. Actinophylla leaflets are also larger but thinner, more like a Dieffenbachia leaf in weight, and veins show up very clearly against a bright light.
Schefflera actinophylla venation.
² For some reason, I was thinking Dirty Harry.
³ There's another botanical name I should probably mention, too: one still sees the botanical name Brassaia actinophylla. Brassaia has sometimes even been the correct name, but it is presently obsolete, and doesn't look likely to come back. As "schefflera" is gaining ground as a common name, you'll probably never need to know Brassaia, but I include it for the sake of completeness.
⁴ It's closer (barely) to being an ivy: it's in the Araliaceae, the family that includes English ivy (Hedera helix) and Algerian ivy (Hedera canariensis). Anybody who could look at a Schefflera and think Oh! Ivy! is pretty messed up, though.
⁵ I even found interesting pictures of this, and sent a message asking to reuse them for PATSP, and the next time I tried to view the page, I either got error messages telling me I didn't have permission to look at the page, or the page loaded, but without any pictures. Could have just said no, we'd prefer that you didn't. Fucking bird ecology people. So the page is here. Perhaps you'll be able to see the images.
⁶ This is something we see with some other houseplant species: both Ficus benjamina and Philodendron bipinnatifidum can start out epiphytically and become terrestrial once they manage to drop roots to the soil. Schefflera has more in common with Ficus, in that it can grow fast enough to overrun the host. Philodendron climbs the host until it pulls it over sideways, but doesn't smother the host, at least not as I understand it. Staghorn ferns (Platycerium spp.) don't drop roots to the soil to become terrestrial, but they're also epiphytes, and will sometimes grow large enough to pull their host tree over sideways. Epiphytes are rude.
⁷ The height varies a lot depending on which source you're reading: I found sources saying everything from 20 feet (6 m) to 100 feet (30 m). I went with 40 feet (12 m) here because it was the median value, but be aware that the plant may be capable of getting taller than that.
Though probably not in your home.
Unless you have 40-foot ceilings.
⁸ Slight wilting during the hottest part of the day is pretty common on outdoor plants, whether they have adequate water or not, because transpiration increases dramatically when it's hot. Indoors, it's less common, because the plant is much less likely to need that much water to transpire. In some growing conditions (not sure which ones those would be), plants look somewhat wilted all the time, so check the soil too, before you water, to make sure the plant actually needs it: don't go only by how it looks.
⁹ S. arboricola can be cut back pretty much where- and whenever, and resprouts easily; I've done that myself. I've never cut back an actinophylla, though, and couldn't actually locate anybody on-line saying they'd done it for one grown indoors. Since outdoor plants are supposed to resprout okay when cut back, I assume it's fine inside too, but I make no promises. As a result, I recommend air-layering for too-tall S. actinophyllas, because I know that way you at least get one acceptable plant when it's over. If anybody has experience with cutting one back indoors, I'd appreciate hearing about it in the comments.
¹⁰ He says they do best with lots of N-P-K fertilizer, heavy on the N, but that he "generally [does] not recommend incorporating minor [trace] elements into the potting medium for scheffleras." I don't get the impression that he thinks it'll hurt the plant, just that it's sort of a waste to give the plant nutrients it doesn't have any use for. He does say, though, that magnesium deficiency happens occasionally, and that it manifests as yellowing along the margins of the oldest leaves. So if you see that, you might try watering with a bit of Epsom salts dissolved in the water for a while, gradually increasing the amount if nothing seems to happen after a few waterings.
¹¹ Who make a nice first impression: not only did they have the plant photo I was looking for, but their availability page has plants listed in alphabetical order by botanical name. (♥ ♥ ♥!) Sadly, they don't sell plants by mail-order, but they still have lots of cool pictures. (Check out Drimiopsis saundersiae 'Sunny-Smile'.)

Pretty pictures: Ampelopsis brevipedunculata

I know porcelain berry vine is an invasive. I know it's irresponsible to plant it. I'm not advocating planting it. I'm not planting it personally. I don't want one. I know it's probably even borderline irresponsible to admire it publicly.


But come on. These berries are damned pretty. So many colors!


I'd noticed the plant before, but a few days ago was the first time I noticed that it wasn't the same thing as grapevines. Why I ever thought it was a Vitis in the first place, I don't know -- the leaf shapes are hardly similar -- but you know how it is. You pass a plant eight thousand times, notice nothing about it, and then on the eight thousand and first you're all like, hey, what's a grapevine doing with oak-shaped leaves like this?




Anyway. The obvious tip-off that it wasn't a grape? The berries. Teal/turquoise is a rare color outdoors here, and it jumps out at me when I see it.


It makes me very sad that Ampelopsis tends to spread out of control and take over ecosystems and all that. It apparently also attracts Japanese beetles, which isn't endearing either. Although the leaf shape is interesting, it's not that pretty when not fruiting, either. But. Slightly iridescent fruits in white, green, turquoise, blue, brown, and violet -- all at the same time -- is a pretty cool trick.

SUPERWEEDS!

So there's this study everybody's been talking about over the last few days, where some researchers found some genetically modified canola plants growing in the wild in the U.S. And I feel like I have to talk about it a little bit. So I will.

What is canola? Canola is a variety of oilseed rape (Brassica campestris or B. rapa), produced for making cooking oil, animal feed, and other products. It's preferable to regular rape because: the name is less off-putting,¹ its glucosinolate levels are significantly lower, making it more suitable for animal and human consumption,² and it was bred to grow especially well in Canada, though that last one is pretty much only preferable if you live in Canada. In the U.S., North Dakota and Minnesota also grow some canola.

Canola field blooming in Saskatchewan. Photo by Wendy, via Wikipedia.
As with a lot of crops, much canola currently being grown is of genetically modified varieties which resist the herbicides glyphosate (Monsanto's) or gluphosinate (Bayer's). American readers are fairly likely to know glyphosate by the trade name Round-Up.

So what the study (conducted by University of Arkansas scientists) found was that -- brace yourself -- along the sides of roads where genetically-modified, herbicide-resistant canola seed is frequently transported, one can find genetically-modified, herbicide-resistant canola plants growing. I'll give you a moment to pick yourself up off the floor.

The bigger news, though, is that some of the plants researchers found had genes for resistance to both glyphosate and gluphosinate. Now, Monsanto sells canola seeds which resist glyphosate but not gluphosinate, and Bayer sells seeds which resist gluphosinate but not glyphosate, but nobody sells seeds which are resistant to both, because doing so would mean violating one or both companies' patents. Which means that the plants are breeding, along the sides of these roads, and a few lucky plants have managed to snag both resistance genes.

So, wow. Plants of the same species, growing next to one another along the side of the road, can cross-pollinate one another and shuffle their characteristics about. Who could possibly have guessed?

Cue the anti-GMO crowd, who point to this as proof that genetically-altered crops can escape into the wild and breed SUPERWEEDS!, which for some reason is always said like that, in bold all-caps, with the exclamation point. They predict that these SUPERWEEDS! will next cross-pollinate other species, species to which they're not even related, and then we'll have even more SUPERWEEDS! until such point as genetically modified organisms ruin every single thing in the world for all time. Or something like that. I'm a little fuzzy on what the actual problem is that they're seeing.

Canola seeds. (Photo: public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.)
Now, it's possible that there's something to this story that I've missed, and GMO canola really is going to kill us all, but here's why I'm not seeing this as a problem, or even as news:

1) It's not news because this has been seen already. This is apparently the first time it's been spotted in the United States, this escaping of transgenes into the wild, but this is old news to Canada, Japan and Australia. So for anybody to be making a big deal out of it now just because it's happening in the U.S. is a little silly. It makes perfect sense that it would happen, we've seen it happen elsewhere, now it's happened here. So what.

2) Genes don't actually jump species that easily in the wild. I mean, it happens, but part of the reason why we can say that this plant is a Strelitzia and this plant is a Phalaenopsis is because they're genetically distinct enough that they won't breed with one another. The odds of an herbicide-resistance gene from a Brassica being transferred to dandelions or goosefoot is pretty tiny.³ And even if it were, the new plant could be sterile, so you get one lonely hybrid plant that lives its life without setting any seeds and then is never seen again. Or it may just be bad at competing with other plants. Or it could get eaten by a cow. Winning the lottery doesn't protect you from getting struck by lightning.

3) The existence of "wild"⁴ plants with transgenes doesn't actually make it more likely that weeds are going to pick up these herbicide-resistance genes. Plants containing these genes were already growing in large fields all over, next to substantial numbers of uncultivated weeds. We could argue about whether that's a responsible arrangement or not, but either way: if the transgenes were going to spread, they were already doing so, so this discovery is small potatoes next to that.

4) These "wild" plants only have one advantage over non-GMO plants: that they're resistant to herbicides. If we stop using these herbicides because they're no longer effective, then these canola plants no longer have an advantage over other plants they're in competition with.⁵ If they no longer have an advantage, then they're likely to be outcompeted. If they're outcompeted, they die, and the problem goes away on its own.

So even if the transgene for glyphosate resistance spread to every single plant on earth, all that would happen is we'd stop spraying glyphosate. Which we should possibly be doing anyway. This is much less an emergency for the environment and much more an emergency for the herbicide manufacturers.

5) As much glyphosate as people were using, some plant was going to evolve glyphosate resistance sooner or later. We may have sped up the process, but herbicides and pesticides never last forever: glyphosate and gluphosinate wouldn't have either.

So.

I'm more or less indifferent to genetic engineering, personally. I don't see it as being that much different from what people were doing before. Whether a crop plant's genes arise through hundreds of years of selection and breeding, or get borrowed, fully-formed, from a jellyfish, platypus, or ostrich, really doesn't matter that much to me, as far as whether or not I'd eat or grow the plant.

Having said that, I'm still deeply worried about the legal and regulatory issues around GMOs: the patents, the suing of organic farmers because the GMO-using farmers can't keep their pollen to themselves, the Terminator genes, and so forth. Monsanto's done some pretty crooked things already; there's no reason to think they won't do more in the future. This doesn't invalidate the technology, but we might question whether we should trust Monsanto with it. A country with a functioning, representative democracy could probably do something about this situation, but I don't live in one of those, so I'm pretty much stuck with crossing my fingers and hoping Monsanto doesn't manage to ruin anything we can't live without.

Well I'm not the world's most masculine man,
but I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man: so's Canola.
Ca- Ca- Ca- Canola, Ca- Ca- Ca- Canola.
(Photo: Canola field in Temora, New South Wales. Photo by John O'Neill, via Wikipedia.)
There are two points I hope readers take away from this. The first is, I'd like you to remember that it matters a great deal what the transgenes have been introduced to do. Genes aren't automatically safe because genetic engineering has happened; they're also not automatically dangerous. BT corn⁶ worries me a little bit, even though the evidence so far seems to be saying that it doesn't pose a serious threat to non-target organisms like monarch butterflies. I worry anyway because I can see how the BT gene might get out and protect weeds from being eaten, someday, or because I can see how large amounts of BT-producing pollen blowing around in the environment could have consequences for other organisms. Don't think consequences are likely, but I can see how it could work, and I wouldn't necessarily be surprised. But this? Herbicide-resistant canola? Not so much.

The second thing is that I would take it as a personal kindness if everybody would stop calling them SUPERWEEDS! The word "superweed" only has one purpose: to scare people and make them easier to manipulate. It's a dumb, dumb word, and more than being dumb, it's dishonest. We have way, way too many words like that now.⁷ Please stop using it.

I'd be willing to settle for ironic-only usage, if that would be easier on everyone.

References:

James and the Giant Corn (who is responsible for me realizing I had enough to say on the subject to make a blog post out of it, and from whom I may have stolen a couple tiny little points)
New York Times
80 Beats
NPR
Grist (anti-GMO)
International Business Times

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¹ Canola" is an acronym of sorts, standing for "Canadian oil, low acid." Originally this was a trademarked name, but has since become generic for low-acid, low-glucosinolate rapeseed oils. The original name of rape is totally innocent, and comes from the Latin rapum, meaning turnip, to which rape is related.
² Glucosinolates are bitter-tasting compounds found throughout the mustard family (Brassicaceae) and a few other families. If you dislike cauliflower, brussels sprouts, broccoli, or cabbage, glucosinolates are probably why.
³ Why? Well, it's complicated, but at least some of the reason is that in order for plants to cross with one another, their chromosomes have to have most of the same genes, in mostly the same order, on more or less the same number of chromosomes. The less-related two plants are, the more genetic changes have accumulated, and the less able they will be to cross.
⁴ I don't think "wild" is exactly the right word here. They can grow in places where they're spilled along the side of the road, and apparently they can also cross and have progeny which also live along the side of the road. But roadsides aren't pristine habitats to begin with, so they're hardly ruining anything we hadn't already ruined.
⁵ In fact, they're likely to be at a disadvantage, if anything. Long story, no time, but maybe someday.
⁶ Corn which has been genetically modified to include a gene for an insect-killing protein from a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis. Among the advantages of BT corn: it doesn't have to be applied to the plant because it's already built-in, it doesn't lose potency during the growing season, and it only affects insects that try to eat parts of the plant. A possible serious disadvantage: pollen, which is spread far and wide through the air, counts as a plant part.
⁷ It's somewhat out of fashion now, but the best example is probably terrorist. It has a real meaning, and occasionally you still see people using it correctly, but most of the time, if somebody starts talking to you about terrorists, that's a sign that someone wants you to turn off part of your brain and be afraid.

Weeds of Interest

These aren't quite roadside flowers, in that I didn't take the pictures along the sides of roads, but the spirit is there, because they're weedy and yet also sort of pretty, or at least interesting. It's unclear whether or not there will be roadside flower pictures this summer, because until the car's air conditioning is fixed or it's an unseasonably cool day, I don't see myself going anywhere I don't absolutely need to go.

But anyway. I am like 99% sure that this first one is a Euphorbia, but I can't figure out which Euphorbia. At first I thought it was the invasive leafy spurge, E. esula, but the more I looked at pictures of E. esula on-line, the more the bracts on this plant seemed a little too rounded, and the flowers too dense. Also I saw some in someone's yard that looked like they could have been planted there deliberately (it was kind of ambiguous; they were in a couple spots around the trunk of a maple tree, which could have been deliberately placed to look natural or naturally placed in a way that happened to look planned). So then I was no longer sure. In any case, they were all blooming in April at some point, and although these particular plants have since all been mowed down, I think they're kind of neat.

The first two photos are a couple weeks before the last three, which is why they look different. I'm pretty sure they're the same plants.







I've been noticing this second plant for years, without having any idea what it was, and I'd actually taken a picture of it recently to post here at PATSP so I could find out. And then a few days ago, I was reading something on-line that was completely unrelated to Iowa weeds (a large collection of information about odors used in perfumery, particularly those from plant sources, and actual structures of the specific chemicals responsible for the various odors, which is information nobody ever includes, so I was in chem nerd heaven -- do check it out), I ran into a picture and mention of something called wild chamomile, which looked just like the plant I'd been noticing for years but had never been able to identify.

Turns out it's Matricaria discoidea.


Matricaria is unusual in a number of interesting ways: first, it's one of those plants that is "native" to North America but may not be native to North America. It has historically been found mainly in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and in Northeast Asia, but there is reason to think that it may have been brought over from Asia when humans crossed the Bering Strait and colonized the Americas, between 16,000 and 13,000 years ago, and may not actually be native to North America at all, in the long-term sense. (As we have seen, whether something is "native" to a given area or not depends to some degree on the time frame you're interested in.)


If the pre-Native Americans brought it with them, it was probably deliberate: it has been used medicinally for a number of different things (fever, postpartum anemia, infection, stomach upset), and the plant is also edible. Flowerheads have a pineapple / chamomile odor when crushed, which is responsible for the common name of "pineapple weed."


It's also noteworthy for being a successful invasive in Europe, though I don't get the impression that it's a very serious problem -- Matricaria is what is called a "ruderal" species, which means that it's one of the first species to colonize recently disturbed lands. Once other species begin to grow in the area, Matricaria is crowded out and more or less disappears. (Around here, I mostly see it growing in gravel driveways or alleys, where little else will.)


When I found out what it was, I of course had to check the smell out for myself. I can see where the "pineapple" part of the description comes from, but it's a very different type of pineapple smell than something like Salvia elegans. I'm not sure I would have come up with "pineapple" as a descriptive word if I hadn't already known it was called pineapple weed. I haven't been willing to try tasting it yet, partly because some sites warn that the flower heads can be really bitter, and partly because I have no way of knowing what's been sprayed on the plants I find around town.

I always did like the plant, but having a name for it and knowing more about where it comes from makes me like it a lot better.

The One About the Native Plants Purist, Part II

(This is Part II. If you haven't read Part I yet, you should do that before reading this. It has "Ghost Whisperer" jokes, carnivorous plants, and a hopeful but tragically misguided plan to solve the invasive species problem by making every species invasive.)

Ficus microcarpa. Native to: South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia, some Pacific islands. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

6. You can't go home again.
Finally, I very badly want to know which past ecosystem my anonymous commenter wants us to return to. They've never been static. I grew up in an Iowa that had ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus torquatus), as did my parents and grandparents, and everybody around here thinks they're native North American birds, but in fact they've only been here since the late 1800s. Should we round them up and send them back to Asia? Honeybees aren't native to North America either, and were only brought over from Europe in the 1600s. It'd be an agricultural disaster for the U.S. if we lost them all, but a true native-species purist would send them back. Hell, human beings -- even so-called "Native Americans" -- are new as of about 10,000 to 14,000 years ago. And on bigger time scales, the continents have been sliding around for millions of years. Where does one draw the line and say, this is the ecosystem we need to preserve?

And even if one picked a time to reset the clock to, and even if all the rats and pheasants and honeybees and Ardisias could be rounded up and disposed of, the fact is that the ecosystems are already irreparably transformed. The ecological niche of "passenger pigeon" (Ectopistes migratorius), whatever it was, can no longer be filled by passenger pigeons. We've wiped them out. So in that sense, you can't turn back time -- the ecosystems cannot be restored exactly as they were. Indeed, were all humans to vanish, and all plants, animals, and other organisms to magically return to their original habitats, it would only cause more extinctions: some native plants and animals actually depend on the actions of non-natives right now. Avocados (Persea americana) are thought to have evolved to be swallowed whole by now-extinct ground sloths, who would then distribute the pits in their droppings. No such animal exists now, so if humans disappeared, we would likely take the avocado down with us.

Of course, we're likely to take a lot more of them with us if we're not magically zapped off the planet, as recent events in the Gulf of Mexico suggest. But still. If we're going to "restore" the ecosystems, then we should acknowledge that there have been several of them in any given location, and decide which one to restore them to.

Murraya paniculata. Native to: South, Southeast, and East Asia, Northern Australia. A Florida Category 2 invasive plant.

7. So in conclusion (You are getting to a conclusion, right?)
So what does it all mean, Mr. Subjunctive?

Oh, fuck if I know. I guess my first point, and the most important, would be that showing up on a stranger's blog to yell at them about their choice of posting topics is really rude and it's not going to do anything but make them defensive and sarcastic. Especially if you're a testerical asshole who gets off on telling people where plants "should" be grown.

But also, look. Invasive species are a real problem, and I think governments should be taking them more seriously. If we're going to eradicate them, though, we should commit the resources to doing so that are necessary.¹ I'd also like to think that eradication is possible, but honestly, I'm not sure I do. In the same way that total elimination of spider mites from a large collection of houseplants is all but hopeless, complete elimination of Ardisia from the Everglades is all but unattainable too. All it takes is one missed pregnant female spider mite, and a distraction. All it takes is one overlooked Ardisia seedling, and complacency. Even with the full backing of local government, community organizations, national environmental groups, President Obama, Wonder Woman, all the angels in Heaven, and Mr. Anonymous shrieking threats at every blogger in creation, I don't see Florida getting rid of its Ardisia problem. I don't think they want it badly enough. (I don't know that they ought to want it that badly, either. There are other things the state could do with that money.) Unless Ardisias can be made valuable enough to be worth digging up, they're Floridians now.²

Which means that I think it's all the more important that people pay attention to the evaluations of organizations like HEAR. If it's impossible to get rid of the invasives we've got, we could try not to bring in any new ones. I'm not optimistic about that, either, because I well know the gardener's longing for novelty, and the logical impairment that goes along with it.³ But perhaps it's worth a try anyway.

In the long run, I'm not sure any of this matters. Mr. Anonymous berated me quite a bit for growing plants that "shouldn't" even be on this continent, but the fact is, "should" is a meaningless word in this context. Plants and animals have always moved around as sea levels rose and fell, as land bridges appeared, as volcanoes created new islands, as birds flew from place to place. I mean, it's not a good thing that so many plants and animals are disappearing: the Everglades are a distinct and interesting ecosystem, and it's a shame to have them changed at all, but that was all done well before I ever wrote a damn thing about Ardisia elliptica. In fact, the first introductions of Ardisia elliptica to Florida were in 1947, when I was in my negative mid-twenties. And, even if all the world's Ardisias were to pop out of existence all at once tomorrow, the Everglades has a dozen or more other invasives in it which are all just as bad or worse.

So perhaps we should be taking the long view. In another 250 million years or so, South America and/or Africa⁴ are going to crash into Florida and ruin the Everglades anyway. Even if Mr. Anonymous is standing there astride the little trickle of water between continents, commanding them not to merge, they still will. But hey, a bright spot: maybe Ardisia elliptica and all its descendant species will begin to die out in the process, and the sentient, plastic-and-oil-eating molluscs who rule the earth at that time will be beside themselves with worry about how to preserve the fragile, precious Ardisias. Stranger things have happened.

Syngonium podophyllum cv. Native to: Central America, Southern Mexico, Caribbean, Northern South America, Brazil. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

8. Questions for discussion.

1. Do you feel, in your heart of hearts, that efforts to eradicate invasive exotic species are worth the time, money, and collateral ecological damage they cause?
2. Particularly since there's a good chance that we'll wind up covering the ecosystem with oil before we get all the invasives out anyway?
3. Have you ever deliberately planted something you knew might escape cultivation and become invasive? If so, why?
4. Isn't Mr. Anonymous an enormous testerical jerky douchebag?
5. "Rape" as ecological metaphor: for it or agin' it?
6. What, specifically, is lost, when a native species is outcompeted and driven extinct by an exotic? Why should anybody care? Why do you think people don't care more? (Or, if you think people care too much: why do you think people care so much?)
7. What do you suppose is up with people being able to mass-produce plants in Florida that are known to wreck Florida ecosystems? Why is this permitted? And why don't they just go pick them up in the wild and throw them in pots to ship north?
8. Am I totally wrong? Is Mr. Anonymous right to criticize me for encouraging production of an ecologically dangerous plant? Does it still matter, sixty-three years after their introduction to Florida, if I tell people Ardisia elliptica makes a good houseplant? Why or why not?

Ardisia crenata. Native to: East and Southeast Asia. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

Additional reading:
The Garden Professors: Are Natives the Answer?

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Photo credits: all my own.

¹ Though this obviously excludes the brown anole (Anolis sagrei), which is invasive and causing all kinds of problems in Florida and Hawaii, but should nevertheless be allowed to run free and unfettered as long as Felipe is still down in Florida somewhere.
² If I have a plan for getting rid of invasive plants, that's pretty much it. Find something they're good for, and then turn business loose to exploit and despoil. What Florida needs is a George Washington Carver of Ardisias.
³ It would be really interesting to stick a hardcore gardener (like most garden bloggers and PATSP readers, I'm guessing) in an MRI machine and show pictures of unfamiliar plants to him/r. What would happen in the logic center of the brain? Is there a part of the brain devoted to novel plants? What about a taxonomic center, that tries to figure out what the plant is most related to? Does activity shut down in the ethical department, as the gardener plots how to find and take the plants? Does the spatial-relationships area go wild as the gardener tries to figure out where s/he could fit the new plant into his/r garden? I think there are some interesting neurological questions to be answered here.
⁴ Predictions vary. On one map I found, it looked like South America crashes into North America; on a second, North America and South America kind of both slam into Africa at the same time. Either way, the Everglades are in the middle of it all, and presumably go through some changes.

The One About the Native Plants Purist, Part I

Ardisia elliptica. Native to: South Asia, Southeast Asia, Indonesia. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

1. PATSP is attacked!
On December 7, some anonymous person showed up on the Ardisia elliptica profile and dropped a big ol' douchebomb on me for owning one and writing a profile about it. I was called irresponsible, stupid, ridiculous, and silly, because of Ardisia's potential to become invasive and "rape" (his/r word¹) ecosystems. It's so rapey, in fact, that its sale is actually illegal in Florida. I actually spent quite a bit of time on the plant's invasive tendencies in the profile itself, which you'd think would let this person know that, minimally, what s/he² was telling me wasn't news, but you know how people get.

When I pointed out that I live in USDA Zone 5 Iowa, and Ardisia elliptica is not cold-hardy past Zone 9, and that furthermore the plant has been indoors for essentially its entire life, and was therefore not going to be raping anything, much less an entire ecosystem, his response was that it didn't matter, because his stumbling across my blog "proved" that I had South Florida readers,³ and what if one of them were moved to buy the plant because of my profile?

Which, you know, whatever. If its sale is in fact illegal in Florida, then South Florida readers won't be buying it anyway, so I don't quite get how this is a concern. But if you actually read the profile, it's not even especially glowing. I mean, yes, the plant makes a good, possibly even excellent, houseplant. It really does. I'm not going to apologize for saying so. But I think it's clear that I'm not advocating planting it in South Florida, or Hawaii, or anywhere else it might become invasive, and in fact am specifically telling people not to, at some length. So, you know, what the fuck, dude?

Tradescantia spathacea. Native to: Tropical and subtropical North and South America. A Florida Category 2 invasive plant.

2. North American plants.
The conversation went on from there, various rudenesses were fired from both sides, and if you want to see the blow-by-blow you can go to the Ardisia elliptica profile and read the comments for yourself. But the reason I bring it up in the first place, aside from the obvious pleasure it will bring me to see other people join me in calling him a jackass and douchebag,⁴ is because he did say one thing that surprised me a little: I don't understand why you can't just be happy with North American plants.

It hadn't really occurred to me that this was something especially desirable, because, again, it all stays indoors, all the time, and so it's totally irrelevant where any of the plants come from. But okay, fine, let's see.

And it turns out that there are very few North American plants suitable for indoor cultivation. The bulk of those which are tend to be cactus and succulent species from Northern Mexico and the U.S. Desert Southwest;⁵ to get anything at all lush and green, you either have to go south, to the rainforests of South Mexico,⁶ or north, to the U.S.⁷ And anyway, since when do native plant purists consider it good enough merely to get the right continent? Species from North America can and do become invasives when planted in other parts of North America; for example, Syngonium podophyllum is invasive in Florida, but native to Mexico and Central America. So to be really satisfactory, I'd have to limit myself to plants native to the Upper Mississippi Valley, or maybe even the state of Iowa specifically. And you know what? Iowa doesn't have a climate much like the modern American home, so the modern American home isn't a good place to grow plant species native to Iowa. Not saying it couldn't be done, but it wouldn't be very comfortable for the humans involved.

Which Anonymous might counter with, well why do you even need houseplants at all? Can't you just be happy growing stuff outside? Which is such an obviously stupid question that it shouldn't be dignified with a response, so I won't.⁸

Schefflera actinophylla. Native to: Australia, New Guinea. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

3. Invasiveness is predictable.
The thing is, though, this is all idiotic. Most plants aren't invasive. I mean, I think there's been so much of a fuss made about invasives in certain circles that people honestly think that anything introduced is bad.⁹ Also, invasive plants share certain characteristics: rapid growth, ability to self-pollinate, production of a lot of seeds, seeds that spread to new places via bird droppings or via wind, poisonous or inedible foliage, the ability to regenerate from a piece of root or rhizome, that sort of thing. These are measurable and observable qualities of the plants, and it's possible to make pretty solid advance guesses as to how big of a problem a plant is likely to be. Indeed, there are sites on-line where one can see the results of such assessments, like for example hear.org (HEAR = Hawaii Ecosystems at Risk).¹⁰

And most plants, native or not, behave themselves just fine. On-line conversations get heated about natives vs. exotics, and people get defensive about whether or not they should have the right to plant potentially invasive non-natives in their garden -- because of course they are good and responsible and would never let such a plant spread in ecosystem-damaging ways¹¹ -- but whatever benefits there are to native plants, it's still not useful or accurate to be treating all plants like invasives just because they're from elsewhere.

(I've seen one person, who apparently meant it, say in a blog comment that "every plant is invasive somewhere." This is not even a little bit true, alas. It's a shame it isn't, because then we'd have the endangered-plant problem completely solved: all we'd have to do would be to introduce the endangered plants to all the available ecosystems until they found one they liked, and voila, endangered species saved! I mean, of course they'd be saved by becoming invasive and endangering something else, but that's easy enough to fix -- we'll just move the newly endangered plants around until they find something they like. Reshuffle the deck fast enough, and none of the cards will disappear.)

This hypervigilance against exotic species reaches amazing new heights of stupidity and dogmatism when you're talking about an "invasive" that can't freeze, being grown in Iowa, or when you're talking about the invasive potential of a plant that stays inside year-round. Plants that don't go outdoors don't become invasive, even if they might really, really want to. Plants that die from freezing temperatures aren't going to invade anything even if they're thrown on the compost pile. So, you know, chill the fuck out already.

Epipremnum aureum. Native to: South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Northern Australia, Solomon Islands. (I was surprised by this, as I'd always heard that they were native to the Solomon Islands and that's it. But GRIN says otherwise.) A Florida Category 2 invasive plant.

4. Is the Florida Legislature in the pocket of Big Ardisia?
My anonymous persecutor¹² did make one point which is very nearly valid, which was that because the plants I buy are mostly grown in Florida, it doesn't matter whether I'm right or wrong about Ardisias being invasive in Iowa.¹³ By buying the plant and encouraging others to do so, I'm creating a demand for a plant which may harm the area in which it is being produced. The reason this is only very nearly valid, and not actually valid, is that I am not responsible for writing and enforcing legislation in the state of Florida. Ardisia elliptica is supposed to be illegal in Florida: you can't plant or even own them, if you're an ordinary Florida citizen.

So how is it that certain companies are permitted to mass-produce Ardisia for sale?¹⁴ Indeed, if Ardisias are that abundant in the wild, to the point where they're wrecking ecosystems and stuff, why not just send people out to pull them up, throw them in pots, and ship them to zone 5, where they will eventually die an ungainly death? You get rid of the plants, you get money back for doing it. Why bother growing them in greenhouses, on purpose, at all?

Or! For my purposes as a consumer, it really doesn't matter to me whether my plants are grown in Florida, Texas, or on the third moon of the planet Zecuponia 7.¹⁵ There's every reason to think that they could be grown right here in Iowa, in fact: my personal plant has bloomed and formed berries, and I'm assuming that the seeds within the berries can be germinated if they ever get around to ripening. There's no reason why someone couldn't start a greenhouse in Iowa to produce Ardisias for other people in cold climates; I imagine the main reason that nobody does is because nobody could compete with Florida prices.¹⁶

If escaped Ardisias really are despoiling the natural Florida ecosystem -- and I'm not saying they aren't -- then I have to wonder why they're still being cultivated there. Is the Ardisia industry bringing in that much money and that many jobs? Do Floridians just not care that much about their ecosystems? Are sinister lobbyists for Big Ardisia convincing Florida legislators that there isn't really a problem, and any government oversight on Ardisia production would ruin Florida's economy forever? Is my anonymous anti-invasive friend perhaps a little overwrought and testerical?¹⁷ I don't know. But in any case, the state of Florida has it in its power to completely remove the apparently grave threat posed by PATSP and other Ardisia advocates, by not cultivating them there on purpose, and they don't do it.

Lantana camara 'Landmark Yellow.' Native to: Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, Northern South America. A Florida Category 1 invasive plant.

5. Can the toothpaste be put back in the tube?
Finally, even assuming that I accepted the premise that Ardisias are ruining everything, and stopped writing about them in any but the most disparaging terms, destroying them in garden centers whenever I came across them, exactly what would be accomplished? It's like telling someone not to say anything pleasant about starlings, lest someone be moved to keep one as a pet. That particular toothpaste is already out of the tube, and unless the entire state of Florida mobilizes to find and destroy Every. Single. Ardisia within its borders, and search every vehicle entering the state from top to bottom, it's now part of the Florida ecosystem. Period.

Complete eradication of an invasive species is the sort of thing that really requires a commitment from an entire state's government and population in order to be successful, and that's clearly not happening in Florida. Also, I'm not even sure that invasive plants and animals are ever completely eradicated. Maybe on small islands, where the chances of re-introduction from outside are minimal, and the population is constrained by the limited land area. Maybe then. But for all the effort put into trying to control and remove Asian carp, sparrows, Caulerpa taxifolia, garlic mustard, kudzu, multiflora rose, pigeons, gypsy moths, purple loosestrife, Hessian fly, cane toads, nutria, zebra mussels, lampreys, rabbits, cottony cushion scale, rhesus monkeys, rosy wolfsnails, monk parakeets, varroa mites, spotted knapweed, English ivy, gray squirrel, leafy spurge, brown tree snakes, dandelions, fire ants, tree of heaven, northern snakeheads, water hyacinth, crown of thorns starfish, and the many, many other problem species out there, in the various places they've wreaked havoc -- have any of them actually been eliminated? Is this a problem that ever gets fixed?

I don't exactly mean to say that since Ardisia elliptica is already in the wild, we ought to just give up and let it take over, just that there is a choice to be made here. Either Floridans specifically, and the U.S. in general, need to commit to eradication of the species, come up with a way to make controlling them more economical, or give up and let them take over. Because if you don't put enough money toward fixing this problem, you may as well just be throwing it away, year after year after year. And this is never, ever going to be dealt with properly if special exceptions are made for commercial plant growers. Hurricanes do happen, buildings do get knocked down: any plant being cultivated or mass-produced can get out and start the whole thing over again.

(Come back on Friday for the exciting conclusion. I promise a solution to the Ardisia elliptica problem, sentient molluscs, and wild speculation on what happens to gardeners in MRI machines.)

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Photo credits: all my own.

¹ Which for various reasons kind of bothers me: I tend to think that, all else being equal, the word rape should mean rape, and not being defeated in video games, made to pay taxes, or any of the various other things it is sometimes intended to mean. It's not even a very good metaphor for those things, as metaphors go. This use of the word, w/r/t the environment, has some historical precedent, and I used it right back in my reply, in the same way, so I'm probably not the best person to be raising objections. But even so, it does seem like there should be a line somewhere.
² I'm almost positive that the anonymous commenter was male, due in large part to "his" use of the rape metaphor and obvious comfortableness in wandering onto a stranger's blog and calling its author irresponsible without, apparently, actually reading the post "he" was objecting to. Technically, I don't know, but I'm going to go with "he" for the rest of the post, because . . . he's obviously a guy.
³ If you want to be nitpicky, it really only proves that I have had one South Florida reader. Though I know I've had others, so fine, point taken.
⁴ (Well, you'd better.)
⁵ Examples: Echinocactus grusonii, Pachyphytum ovatum, Agave victoriae-reginae, Beaucarnea recurvata, Leuchtenbergia principis.
⁶ Anthurium podophyllum, Syngonium podophyllum, Chamaedorea metallica, Dieffenbachia spp., Selenicereus chrysocardium.
⁷ Tolmiea menziesii is native to the U.S. Pacific Northwest. A lot of carnivorous plants, for some reason, are from the continental U.S. and/or Canada, though none of them are particularly well-suited for cultivation indoors in someone's living room or office. (Dionaea muscipula is from the border between North and South Carolina, but also Sarracenia, Darlingtonia, Pinguicula and Drosera are all partly or totally North American genera.)
There are also a number of species which are occasionally claimed to be from the continental U.S., though the evidence is sketchy. Philodendron hederaceum, Phlebodium aureum, Peperomia obtusifolia, and Pedilanthus tithymaloides might be native to South Florida, Stenocereus thurberi may be native to Arizona, and Tradescantia zebrina and pallida might be native to South Texas.
⁸ And anyway, I shouldn't have to defend myself against things I imagine some jackass might ask. We'd be here all damn day.
⁹ An argument could be made that any introduced species is technically harmful to the native ecosystem, because even if it's behaving itself, it takes up space which could belong to a native. I mean, domesticated corn (Zea mays) is all but helpless to reproduce itself without human intervention, because we've bred them to be like that, so it's about as far from invasive as you could get. At the same time, the big cornfield at the end of my back yard is still taking up space that could be native Iowa prairie, full of native trees, butterflies, birds, leeches, or whatever, and so it still hurts the environment even if it were being cultivated with the most attention possible to fertilizer runoff, pesticide use, erosion, and so forth. (Which I doubt it is, but that's something for another post.)
I forgive this loss to the environment because, basically, I like to eat food. I find it helps me to stay alive, and staying alive has been a goal of mine for a good fifteen years now. Which is also a matter for another post.
¹⁰ HEAR assesses Ardisia elliptica as having a high risk of invasive and disruptive behavior (see assessment page), which is a lot like closing the barn door after the horse has already become an invasive plant. (A. elliptica is already all over Hawaii in the way that "Ghost Whisperer" is all over basic cable.) But it's cute that they're trying.
¹¹ Which is no doubt perfectly true of many of the people saying this. However: everybody thinks they're responsible and conscientious people who would never do anything harmful, even the people who are obviously not. So we can't really go by someone's self-assessment.
Also, even people who are responsible citizens can be distracted away from taking care of their gardens, for example by dying, or having to move suddenly, and there's no way you can guarantee that these things won't end up happening to you. I.e., I'm not trying to call anybody irresponsible or immature exactly, just saying that if you deliberately plant something known to be invasive in your climate or climates similar to yours, or a plant which strongly resembles known invasives, your intentions and plans don't count for shit, because you are not in absolute control of what happens.
¹² (Help, help, I'm being oppressed!)
¹³ (SPOILER: I am right.)
¹⁴ This is not a problem specific to Ardisia elliptica, either -- the same supplier was sending us a number of different plants which were Category 1 invasives in Florida. (Category 1: plants that have been determined to cause ecological damage in the state already. Category 2 invasives have expanded their ranges but have not yet provably hurt anything.) The Category 1 invasives they were shipping to us: Ardisia crenata, Ficus microcarpa, Lantana camara, Nephrolepis cordifolia, Schefflera actinophylla, and Syngonium podophyllum.
We also got the following Florida Category 2 invasives from Florida: Chamaedorea seifrizii, Epipremnum aureum, Jasminum sambac, Livistonia chinensis, Murraya paniculata, Pteris vittata, and Tradescantia spathacea. The full list of Category 1 and 2 plants as of the year 2009 is available as a .pdf file here.
So it's not just a matter of the Florida horticultural industry having a special exemption for Ardisia: they apparently have an exemption for everything. One hopes that this is because they have tough-as-nails regulators breathing down their necks at all times to make sure they don't accidentally do anything that's going to harm their native ecosystems -- I mean, aside from the harm that happens when you pave over large expanses of native ecosystem in order to construct gigantic greenhouses on them -- but it's probably actually that they get a special exemption because the city leaders want to be business-friendly or some such, or because they've convinced the regulators that there isn't really a problem, or because the regulatory agencies are so underfunded that they don't even try enforcing the rules for these plants. America is frequently fucked-up in this way.
But either way, what this tells me is that either 1) the citizens and elected officials of the state of Florida are just not that into their natural ecosystems, or 2) that the problem is not nearly as serious as Anonymous indicated, and Ardisia is not raping the environment so much as making unwanted sexual comments to it. I lean toward #1, having had some experience watching politicians ignore environmental issues.
¹⁵ (But not the seventh moon of Zecuponia 3! I mean, there's carnivorous plants, and then there's carnivorous plants, amirite?)
¹⁶ Heating a greenhouse in Iowa is not cheap, as I was informed way more often and emphatically than necessary while working at the garden center.
¹⁷ Testerical. (tess-TEAR-ih-cull) (from testes, by parallel with hysterical) Adj. 1. Exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion; irrational. Said of men. See also n. testeria.