Posted on 08/24/2009 5:08:51 PM PDT by Coleus
Purple loosestrife has raised its pretty head again this summer. But agricultural officials say the invasive and troublesome swamp plant that once threatened to choke off Garden State wetlands does not stand a chance of getting past a tiny army of weed killers New Jersey agricultural agents are releasing. While the hue of the loosestrife's magenta blooms may occasionally taint roadside ditchess and wetlands, it has faded on the landscape because of thousands of tiny beetles munching away at the weeds.
"We win against the loosestrife, temporarily. Then it comes back, and we knock it down again. But the loosestrife will never get back to the levels and the problems it posed a decade ago. The beetles won't let it," said entomologist Mark Mayer of the state's Beneficial Insect Lab as he waded into a small patch of loosestrife on the banks of Echo Lake in Union County today.
Mayer was talking of the two species of beetles from the "Galerucella" genus -- bugs from Eurasian countries where purple loosestrife is native. The beetles feed almost solely on the weed, leaving native plants alone as they bounce from site to site hunting the purple-headed flora and reproducing a new generation of weed-eaters as they eat their fill of a plant that once posed an ecological nightmare in the nation. "Purple loosestrife has been here since the 1800s. It came in the ballasts of ships from Europe. But it only became a problem about 10 years ago when it suddenly seemed to be everywhere. That's how these things go," Mayer explained.
In 2000, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared purple loosestrife "Public Enemy Number One" on federal lands, as the weed exploded across the North American landscape. In New Jersey, it plagued northern and central counties,
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
For another horrific plant look up Japanese Knotweed.
There was an old lady that swallowed a fly...
We’re using Round Up on it. We have been since spring. It’s killing it and destroying the roots but it’s slow going.
I’m going to try an Ortho product, Brush-B-Gon. The stuff does a fair job on trees and shribs.
Does it kill Buckthorn?
Let me know how it works. The stuff Hubby sprayed only got about a foot high and isn’t flowering. But some of it is still there. Most of it is brown. It took all summer. No veggie garden this year!
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