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  • From: Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] N.E. states are declaring war on harmful non-native plants - The Boston Globe
  • Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 17:20:10 -0700

Unfortunately this is classically representative of the ignorance of which I speak. The point is that a newly acquired butterfly bush can be prevented from spreading simply by cutting off the spent flowers. Period. So if you live in an area where there is none now, you can keep it that way. Just as if you live in an area not currently burning down, it can be kept that way by not throwing a match into it. The danger from matches so far eclipses the danger from butterfly bush by many orders of magnitude. Kudzu should not be planted in the South, but I don't think it would even thrive here, without summer water. Kudzu is an inherently differently sort of plant than butterfly bush, because it spreads asexually, rooting everywhere it hits the ground. So deadheading won't work for that. But this isn't the end of the ignorance.

One of the things we like to laugh about down here at the coast is how the know-it-alls from OSU come down from Corvallis and give us these handouts with color pictures of all those deadly Oregon weeds that grow here (in this coastal county, supposedly). At least 2 of the ones on that pamphlet are never seen locally, and star thistle was one of them. I've never seen a star thistle. Besides, star thistle has no use in permaculture and only an ignorant would ever allow any sort of thistle to prosper. No one's missing out on any beautiful spires of golden winter puffballs because they don't have star thistle, as with acacia.

If we wanted this sort of control to make sense, it would have to be at the most local level. The trouble is that plants are really selective about their environments. The silk tree (Albizia julibrissin) is the most incredible weed I've ever seen on the coast. It volunteers on the dry wood of ocean docks. Out here they're rarely seen, and the two that I didn't pamper enough are dying. And the list goes on. There's gorse at the immediate coast, and none out here.

On every occasion when I've heard our local weed freak go on about butterfly bush, it's always in the context of the difficulty that timber companies have eradicating it from their monocultures. Those are timber states in the Northeast, right? It's always great, as Melody said, when politicans can be perceived as helping people when there really helping themselves and the big money interests.

Real interests of people like me aren't in this radical new dogma anywhere. In fact, I'm one of the non-native invasives that they can order off the land at any moment, if you accept this premise, for humans are non-native everywhere except a tiny region in East Africa. How silly it is to see these goofballs fawning over the "native" poison oak. There's no regard for whether a plant is actually causing harm, merely for whether it's "native". It almost seems the libs are confusing their social theory with the environmental.

I would never reject all weed control laws. Indeed, I wish no one had ever planted Himalayan blackberry here (definitely our worst "weed", beyond your nightmares). I'm paying big bucks to have mine mowed. But now the nation-wide ban on garlic mustard has kept me from getting a useful edible that won't even thrive here without summer water. It had an opportunity to become a weed here, just as in the East, because people used to plant it as a vegetable everywhere, but it didn't.

Once I encounter a weed "expert" who knows more than I do, I'll listen. Besides, it's all just a smoke screen to hide the fact that libs have caved in to big business interests where it really matters. Along with animal rights, it's one pillar of the libs' new business-friendly ersatz-environmentalism.

So Lynda, get your nose out of books, get off the Internet, and go out and _see_ what really is.

Bill
S. Oregon coast

Lynda wrote:

Wow, walk the walk, no more talk Billy Boy. Get yourself out there and volunteer to dead head all that star thistle in Oregon!

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Jones" <billj AT harborside.com>



This is the libs' pseudo-environmentalism. Nobody bothers to point out
that plants can be prevented from reseeding themselves just by
deadheading the spent flowers. It's hard to see which group of emotion
voters is set on banning butterfly bush, so this one must be for the
chemical companies, who'll sell more weed killer.


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