permaculture

[Patrick McKown <identi1956@yahoo.com>]

Paul,

> rather than to Juncus e. and I. psuedoacorus which are
>only successful under very prescribed circumstances.**
>  
>
I guess you could call yellow flag opportunitistic?  But I don't feel a 
need to plant more of it, It'll make good starvation food if you don't 
mind a little heavy metal loading.
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*Yellow flag iris, /Iris pseudoacorus/
*(Washington State Class C Noxious Weed)
This emergent wetland plant with showy yellow flowers quickly spreads 
through underground rhizomes and rhizome fragments. It naturalizes along 
streams, canals, and shorelines in Washington, particularly near 
developed areas. It outcompetes native wetland plants along the 
shoreline and severely reduces water flow.
---clip--*/
Iris pseudacorusis a wetland plant that is especially showy during its 
short blooming period. This good-looking plant has been transplanted 
into well-watered gardens all over the world and has widely escaped; it 
is also used in sewage treatment, and is known to be able to remove 
metals from wastewaters. Like cat-tails, yellow iris colonizes into 
large numbers, forming very dense monotypic stands, outcompeting other 
plants.
/*---clip---
In some regions it has escaped from cultivation to establish itself as 
an invasive <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasive_species> aquatic 
plant <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquatic_plant> which can create 
dense, monotypic stands that outcompete other plants in the ecosystem. 
Where it is invasive, it is tough to remove on a large scale. Even 
ploughing the rhizomes is often ineffective, and its eradication is 
highly unlikely. It has been banned in some areas but is still widely 
sold in others for use in gardens, and it will continue to be planted by 
gardeners unaware of or unconcerned with its invasive potential.
**
None of these links talk about Iris pseudoacorus as an invasive plant.

This is all nonsense. The plant is not invasive, no plant represented in the 
genus Iris, is. 

See bottom of this links page...http://www.heraldica.org/topics/fdl.htm. and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleur-de-lis.
This plant has demonstrated its usefulness for many centuries and if it is 
growing well then it is
providing a service to the environment. The above links demonstrate it's 
other values beyond it's
biology. Plants can survive each other better than they can survive our 
activities placing
billions of tons of cides into the environment each year. What hubris to 
legislate this, our
policies are truly the invasive.



Pat McKown


       
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