Brutes and Invaders

Not all garden brutes are invaders. At least three of the natives in my garden require a lot of careful forethought because they WILL take over an area. One I regret, one I planned, and one pops up and is easy to leave or keep.

I classify thugs in the garden the same way I classify them in the world; by their drive to take over everything. Native or import, garden thugs have several strategies that support their totalitarian ambitions. They blanket, spread, poison or rise up and overwhelm. All of these are extremes of the normal strategies that plants use to spread and find a place, usually in a lovely interplay with others. But thugs tend to do this to the exclusion of other strategies

Canada anemone may be a native, but it is a brute. Its roots create a dense crowding system with no room for anything else. I planted it in a spot where I thought it would have room to spread nicely, but it has actually managed to overwhelm a peony and drive mint to the very edge of the patch. It has now leaped the area I offered it and is creeping along the side of my woodpile. In a few hours I will see how hard or easy it is to roll it back. If it can be removed easily, then I will add it to my list of helpful evictors. However I didn’t do well last time I tried to take it out. I have no particular uses for it except to admire its crop of white flowers, but I like bloodroot’s better and, besides being medicinal and easy to move, blood root gracefully recedes and time shares its space.

David Spahr, that champion of natives, is trying to reduce his mayapple bed, and that tells you everything you need to know. I planted mine where I see them growing naturally, down a slope, and unless it goes into the bottom and starts fighting with my trilliums and trout lilies I am just fine with it where it is. It is part of my clean-up squad where I removed Japanese knotweed, and if it decides to move west it will be greeted by dame’s rocket. If the season is long and hot enough it will yield edible fruit, and for now it is enough of a newcomer this far north that people are amused to see it. Like the anemone, its strategy is primarily outreach, creating a mat of connected clones. It helps stabilize the bank where it is growing so I don’t plan to test how easy or hard it is to move it.

Jewelweed is everywhere. It succeeds by dispersion…another name for it is touch-me-not, for the spring loaded seed pods that spiral snap and fling seeds outward; by overshadowing, growing fast and early to three or four feet; and (check this) a little chemical warfare to suppress competitors. It is also extremely easy to move, uprooting by handful and dropping it where it is to become mulch. Its shoots and seeds are edible, the sap is a classic remedy or poison ivy and insect bites, the pollinators and hummingbirds are delirious over it. It is almost as good as black plastic for clearing and sterilizing a piece of ground.

Some kind of raspberry-I don’t know whether it is native or non-native-gave me a surprisingly good show of clearing as well. It had spread over a wide area and was too shaded to produce berries. It pulled up pretty easily since the roots were all interconnected and quite woody. When it was gone, the area was clear; nothing had grown under it, even the unwelcome bishop's weed that popped up under my red elder pretending to be elder shoots.. This spring, the area is still clear so far and will be home to some other varieties that will grow happily in the heavy shade. Aralia racemosa, invited in, is showing shoots and violets and goldenrod are staking a claim. Berries take over an area by root and dropped seeds, and recruit birds and other animals to spread them much farther. Blackberries seem to be working well at limiting the return of knotweed, but it sometimes pops up a tentative stalk in my raspberry patch.

I can co-exist happily with many non-natives, because they coexist with their adopted neighbors. But there are several non-native thugs that need to be driven out: arch-villains knotweed, garlic mustard and bishops weed. All are edible, useful and obnoxious here. Knotweed is a triple threat: it creates massive patches of impenetrable roots and shoots and dead stalks. Roots burrow deep, spread widely and thrust up fiercely; pieces break off and spread further when the main trunk. A favorite strategy is to take over a river bank and send pieces downstream to colonize new banks. It has sprays of small flowers and seeds, another potential spreader although this doesn’t seem to be an important one here. Perhaps it is all a single self-infertile clone, small mercy. It also shadows out shorter competitors if they can manage a toehold, not that it allows room for toes. It is nonetheless useful: a prolific source of spring shoots, an alleged remedy for Lymes disease.

Garlic mustard uses dispersal and poison to accomplish its nefarious ends. There is no doubt about its chemical warfare; it is notorious for denaturalizing the areas where it grows. It also sends showers of minute seeds that cling to crevices and cracks and travel in the soil and fur of footprints. Like knotweed, it evokes mixed emotions. The greens, shoots and roots are all tasty and nutritious. I suspect someone will find that, like its cruciferous kin, it has medicinal/neutraceutical aspects as well. It makes the ultimate wild pesto.

Goutweed succeeds with runners in shaded areas, but it is a little more circuitous than the other mobsters. It uses runners to leapfrog about, popping up here and there, then gradually thickens up until everything it surrounded has been strangled out. It is not very deep but the roots are fragile and persistent. If you want to be done with it you have to be equally persistent. It is an early green…one way to trim its numbers…and as several of its common names attest, it has some traditional therapeutic reputation.

I invited creeping jenny into my garden for her pretty yellow flowers and humble inoffensive aspect, but I regret it. Creeping on the surface of the soil, I thought she’d behave like her counterpart creeping Charlie, covering bare soil, easy to push aside where space was needed, allowing breathing room for more robust plants. But she is a strangler, more tenaciously rooted, and I suspect that there is some sort of seed flinging going on since she has spread so rapidly around my garden. She doesn’t seem to do anything but be pretty, whereas Charlie gets food and health points, and is beloved to bees. I have too much, too many places. Do you have any suggestions about how to evict her? Any uses to which she may be put?