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[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

Us, to begin with.

Actually I was talking about plants.  Here's a small list I typed up 
this evening.

1.  Acacia dealbata (Silver wattle)

There are no natives that can be expected to persist here on high, 
unirrigated ground, other than fir trees.  The only particular value of 
fir trees, except to squirrels, is to sawmill owners who live forever.  
There won't be any production from a planting for many decades, and even 
if there were, the crooks will offer me 10% to take it from me.  
Furthermore, fir trees toxify the soil and prevent all but adapted 
plants from growing under them.

That really only leaves acacia, the drought-tolerant plant that you can 
put on any dry hillside and expect to harvest _useful_ biomass in just a 
few years.  I'm planning to order 4 more for the front driveway edge 
today.  I wonder where, exactly, is it going to "invade" to from there?  
I'd be reluctant to give it access to water, which it has no need for 
anyway.

Control: Dead-heading isn't necessary here, because the seeds can't 
sprout until after a fire.  Silver wattle can be easily eliminated with 
persistent grazing, and won't survive harsh winters far inland.


2.  Stinging Nettle

Even I'm nervous about this one.  Cattle don't touch it.  The patch next 
to the goose house is expanding slowly.  But it has to be the single 
greatest perennial source of greens ever conceived of by nature.  It's 
not absolutely necessary to have any summer vegetable garden at all, 
short of potatoes and other roots, as long as there's a patch of nettle 
and an orchard around.  A patch of nettle downhill from your garden or 
barn is like a great nutrient sponge that strains every bit of 
nourishment from the runoff.  I'm going to try adding pureed, cooked 
nettle to chicken and goose mash.  Of course, it's gone for the winter

Control: Deadheading is an absolute necessity.  The seed is edible after 
careful straining.  The wonderful thing about nettle is that the tall 
stems snap ever so easily in large bundles, making it easy to put 100 
pounds of it onto the compost bin in minutes.  Near a watercourse, I'd 
insist on an underground barrier around it.


3.  Comfrey

Mollison has comfrey planted at the drip line of fruit trees to 
discourage grass.  That it does, almost magically, with a foot-wide dead 
zone around the clump.  The whole clump dies back for the winter.  I've 
meant to try sowing some true winter annuals over this dead zone in 
winter, like chervil, corn salad, crimson clover, or mustard, which 
would greatly increase the total organic matter output.  Comfrey is so 
soft that it literally purees into a nice liquid fertilizer.  It seems 
to come from nowhere, like grass, but when you snip one large flowering 
stalk, you're cutting almost a half-pound of green manure.

Control: It doesn't ever die, normally, but it's grazed to death by 
cattle, so I can't see it persisting in the pasture.  But neither does 
it spread sideways, like nettle.  The common sterile 'Russian' strain 
doesn't bear fertile seeds.


4.  Chop Suey Tree (Cedrela sinensis)

This plant loves to grow in watercourses, and since it's a willowy plant 
that doesn't shade the ground beneath it, it doesn't get in the way.  
The new spring leaves are used for their flavor of garlic.  This 
medicinal herb shows great promise in the treatment of lung cancer.  It 
spreads by runners.  There is currently no reasonable supplier of live 
plants anywhere in the US, although if I lived in England I could have 
one delivered in hours  I've only planted one of my babies that I raised 
from seed out in the ground yet.

Control: I don't doubt that cattle will graze any new stems that try to 
emerge from runners.  In the dry West it's doomed without water.


.5.  Red Clover

The plain Jane original, at first glance.  Perennial red clover was 
never too popular with farmers, as its woody taproots like baseball bats 
can't be easily tilled in.  It's only good for permanent pasture or hay 
cutting.  For some reason, all the true perennial clover has been 
replaced by 'Kenland' in the stores and catalogs.  It's an annual red 
clover that reseeds itself.  There may be such a thing as an annual red 
clover, but I don't think it's quite the same.  I loved those soild 
taproots.  You can find "persistent" red clovers, like 'Starfire', but 
they don't reseed readily at all.  Last year my experimental planting 
had all its seed sprout right in the seed head.  To find persistent 
clovers with reseeding capability, you almost have to gather seeds from 
the wild.

To be continued...