what is my attitude on invasive plants?
it’s no good when non-native plants usurp a habitat and overwhelm native plant populations.
especially when the usurper is useless for food or other things.
i sometimes wonder whether an instance of classification serves the interests of nature or humankind. if you have not noticed, humankind has a reputation for being self-interested, frequently to a degree of dysfunction. and, come on! humans! humans are so invasive! and so is their grass. look around with a little objectivity, and how could you arrive at any other conclusion? what species has displaced more plants and animals than we have?
i care more about natural equilibrium than i do about someone’s ability to maintain a monoculture of (non-native) grass.
and while i care about animals, the infringement of a non-native plant (even a toxic one) on yard or pastureland does not soley, in my opinion, justify classification as an invasive species. cows and horses are not native to this continent, either. and yards and pastures are not natural wild habitat.
yet, i also realize words like native and natural, in our time, represent relative concepts.
should the ‘invasive’ classification be reserved for plants that threaten actual natural habitat?
or not, because we don’t have enough of it left thanks to our own activities?
re: the interests of man, my gardening self identifies as chaotic neutral.
maybe even on the cusp of malice, under the right conditions. i certainly have malicious feelings towards ‘perfect’ lawns, but i try to control my actions because i need to function in society.
when it comes to the natural equilibrium, i want to strive for goodness. i want to align with it. Nature is good, and observing her laws serves my own interests as well.
if you join a gardening group, you might discover the subject of growing invasive plants to be as polarized as politics, making a real conversation about it almost impossible.
this is not an area where i want to choose a camp and go all-in.
i naturally lack respect for authority and i’m distrustful of government. if this wasn’t true, i would try to join the Master Gardeners and adopt their conventional doctrine at least publicly (as they require). on the other hand, i know there are genuinely well-intentioned and well-informed people working on these issues in government funded programs like UF/IFAS. i’m grateful for the huge amount of information they make accessible to the public.
i like discourse and free thinking. things are not all one way. i don’t believe generalizing and/or moralizing are helpful approaches (to anything).
some plants should not be planted and/or should be eradicated.
i believe there are plants that are potentially invasive, yet the tendency is balanced with usefulness. i also have the impression that lot of invasives thrive in manmade conditions, where human activity has opened up a niche habitat for them, and i’m sketchy on whether that context denotes a truly invasive plant.
i’m surely not alone in thinking that a focus on invasive this, invasive that, can distract from a lot of other human landscaping impacts of greater or equal importance to address, like the over-use of chemicals.
plant-by-plant basis. no absolutes. potential for usefulness weighed against potential to harm natural systems.
…why didn’t i just say that in the beginning?
why didn’t you skip to the ending?
🙂
