There's an article in a local newspaper by a West Bloomfield 
official recanting the homage previous township officials paid 
Purple Loosestrife when they named it West Bloomfield's official 
flower.  The reason the author gave for Purple Loosestrife's fall 
from favor is that it's a European import that's spread unchecked 
in the absence of natural enemies, and is crowding out our native 
plants and ruining our wetlands.  But I wonder...

Purple Loosestrife, which has indeed come to dominate yards and 
roadsides here in West Bloomfield, is one of the plants house-
hunter manuals often cite as sufficient reason not to buy a house 
if you find it growing on the property.  It's not that there's 
anything noxious about the plant itself, which is lovely in large 
masses and which attracts all kinds of interesting insects (I 
caught my first Abbot's Sphinx in a stand of purple loosestrife).  
The problem is that Purple Loosestrife likes to have its feet wet, 
as the gardeners say.  In fact, you often see it growing together 
with cattail.  Any house with Purple Loosestrife right there on the 
property is likely to be sitting in or near a patch of wet ground, 
with all the attendant problems of waterlogged living.  

Back when Purple Loosestrife was still politically correct we 
planted a couple of plants in our back yard.  Although they look a 
bit anemic when the weather is dry, and they haven't tried to 
spread, they've survived for four years now and obviously find our 
property habitable.  This is not surprising: our basement was 
constantly flooded after we moved in until we paid a small fortune 
to have it sealed up.  (I believe our house is actually seaworthy 
now.)  And we're located on a *hill*, if you could call it that.  

So, do you have lots of Purple Loosestrife where you live?  Have 
you heard any talk about exterminating it to make room for native 
plants to come back?

20 responses total.

The Nature Conservancy, in particular, has a campaign to uproot Purple
Loosestrife from all of their nature preserves, in order to permit the
native wetland plants to exist. I just did a sweep of current conservation
magazines that I get (10), because I recall there was an article about PL,
but it must have been earlier. Ask The Nature Conservancy, 517-332-1741
for leads to publications on the subject. 

The north side of Plymouth Road just north of downtown is covered with
loosestrife juxtaposed with cattails.

Is West Bloomfield a sprawling suburb?  Purple Loosestrife its official
flower?  How appropriate!

Valerie pointed out to me how this plant is taking over.  You see it
all along the banks of the Huron.  It does look nice, but I'm not sure
that I like the way it crowds out native plants.

Another place where you can see how it takes over is Platt Road just
south of Michigan Avenue.  It has completely taken over an empty field
there.  There must be an acre or more of it there.  You can see it
from the freeway (US-23), too.

Re #1, thanks, rcurl.  I called the number and they offered to
send some literature on the subject.  I'll enter any shareworthy
stuff here.

Re #2, West Bloomfield does sort of sprawl, but what I find so
funny about Purple Loosestrife being named the offical flower is
that a burb so notoriously conscious of property values should
have as an official flower something that renders residential
property undesireable.

If loosestrife prevents developers from buying up cheap farmland and planting
housing developments where they don't really need to be, then it's not so
destructive to the countryside after all.  Hooray for loosestrife!
I guess disruption must occur, whether it's by paving or by renegade
garden plants.

Loosestrife doesn't *prevent* developers from destroying wetlands. They just
just have to do more to drain and fill. The loosestrife isn't a barrier,
it is just an indicator of wet conditions. I recall that there are some
insects that feed on loosestrife, but that they were not imported with
the plant. Well, I better wait for md to post the "true facts".

Sounds about like the wild rose situation in Iowa.  And it sounds very
noxious as plants go.  (The Iowa legislature once declared the sunflower
a noxious weed due to how it takes over; I imagine they've done the same
for wild rose, in spite of how beautiful it might be).

The Nature Conservancy package came yesterday.  Lots of recent
clippings, including Canadian publications.  This is a major
problem in Canada, too.  Some of the Articles have a doomsday
tone:  "Purple Loosestrife may eventually replace wetland ecosystems
all over the world with its beautiful but deadly monoculture."
"Beautiful but deadly" is a recurring theme.

It turns out there are three European beetles that feed exclusively
on Purple Loosestrife.  They've already been thoroughly tested (as
thoroughly as anything in nature can be tested) and released in
several controlled programs around the country.  There's also a
native moth, the Spotted Wood Nymph, whose larva seems to have a
taste for Purple Loosestrife.  Researchers are working with it, too.

While biological "cures" like these are by far the most effective
long-term solutions, various agencies have been using herbicides
in particularly desperate cases.  There was one story from a Canadian
publication that described a familiar old wetland suddenly covered
with acres of purple blossoms as far as the eye can see, and
absolutely nothing else; the worst thing about the scene was the
dead silence: no birds, no beavers or muskrats, no bugs, nothing.
Sad.

Does the material contain explanations for the devastation of Purple
Loosestrife? How does it wreck its havoc on birds, beavers, bugs,
etc? Do I recall it was a glutton for water, and inedible? But why
bugs?

It crowds out everything and creates a dense canopy under which
nothing grows.  All the bugs' foodplants get choked out.  All of
everything gets choked out.  The result is a "monoculture" that's
only good for Purple Loosestrife and whatever is above it on
the food chain.  Since there's nothing above it on the food chain
in most areas, that leaves just Purple Loosestrife.

Twenty acres of purple blossoms will still attract an impressive
number of bugs from elsewhere to feed at the blossoms.  But my
Abbott's Sphinx, for example, is still going to have to go and
find it's own foodplant to lay eggs on, since it's larval foodplants
that are important for moths, butterflies and many other kinds
of insects as well.

[Abbott's Sphinx = Sphecodina abbotti, a diurnal moth that looks
like a cross between a hummingbird and a bumblebee.]

Sounds like whats-his-name could do a horror film titled "Purple Loosestrife".
People being overwhelmed and smothered by the creeping monster from the
swamp - and all that.

A word of explanation about bugs and their foodplants:  

One thing every kid who collects caterpillars learns is that if you 
throw one into a jar with an assortment of grasses and weeds, it 
may refuse to eat and eventually starve to death.  This is because 
the range of plants a given caterpillar will eat can be incredibly 
limited -- often only one or two plant species.  If you don't 
provide your caterpillar with a fresh supply of exactly its 
specific foodplant, it won't eat.  It doesn't even recognize other 
plant species as food.  

As the larva's function is to eat and grow, so the adult moth or 
butterfly's function is to mate and lay eggs.  Many adult moths 
have no functioning mouthparts or digestive organs -- they're 
literally designed to mate, lay eggs, and then die of starvation.  
Most adult butterflies do have siphon-like mouthparts through which 
they can imbibe nectar from flowers, or various nutrients from mud, 
rotten fruit, dung, and so on.  They're usually not very picky 
where they get their daily sustenance.  When the females come to 
lay their eggs, however, they *must* find their species' larval 
foodplant to lay them on.  There's no other way the the hatchling 
caterpillars are going to survive.  

Thus, you'll see a Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) drinking 
nectar out of every single species of flower in your garden, but 
the female Monarch will lay her eggs only on milkweed, the larval 
foodplant.  Similarly, the Painted Lady butterfly (Cynthia cardui) 
loves to drink at mud puddles, but will only lay its eggs on 
thistle plants.  

All of this is simply to say that the lovely shimmer of insect life 
you often see over a stand of Purple Loosestrife means only that 
the Purple Loosestrife hasn't yet crowded out the insects' 
foodplants.  It's in the middle of a really emormous stand of 
Purple Loosestrife, where there's no other plant life for acres and 
acres around, that you get the eerie silence and emptiness 
described in the article about the Canadian wetland.  

Is The Nature Conservancy looking for any assistance in uprooting
PL? 

I didn't see anything about it in their literature.  If you want
to offer to help why not give 'em a call.

I received a catalog from White Flower Farm in Litchfield, Connecticut,
yesterday that offers two varieties of Purple Loosestrife.  In the
text describibg the plants there's a note:  "A native speicies, Lythrum
salicaria, is widely established in wetlands in many northern states,
sometimes proliferating to the point where it chokes out less aggressive
native species.  For this reason, some states have embarked on eradication
programs and prohibit the sale of Lythrums.  We entirely respect these
efforts but are persuaded that the vast populations of wild plants already
in place will almost certainly overwhelm any local efforts aimed at control.
These circumstances are not, in our view, occasion for excluding Lythrum
from all gardens, though it seems prudent to encourage prompt deadheading.
The varieties we offer are self-sterile hybrids selected in Canada for
vigor and rich color.  They can and will interbreed with local populations
if not deadheaded."

While I dearly love White Flower farm, and their plants are great,
and they're doing good by eliminating plastic packaging, etc.
I think they're a bit behind on their botany/ecology.
PL, while pretty, is an ecological disaster.
q

Does anyone know whether anything is currently being done in Michigan to
eradicate PL?  I heard a talk about a year & a half ago by someone at the
Mich. Botanical Club (sorry, can't recall his name) who said Ontario has some
kind of experimental burning program to get rid of the stuff.  

I haven't seen anything about PL programs in the many Michigan 
natural history and conservations mags I read, this year. I don't know
that burning would be useful - its a wetland plant, not a prairie plant.
There was something about introducing a natural insect enemy, but I don't
know if that has been done. 

A front page story in a local paper recently revealed
plans by West Bloomfield Township ecologists to
introduce a beetle species into the purple loosestrife
stands in the township.  The beetle is an imported
one that eats purple loosestrife.  We'll see.

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