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Alien Purple
| Article
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10239 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1993 |
1,915 Words |
| Author
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Dwight G. Smith
Dwight G. Smith is professor and chairman of the biology
department at Southern Connecticut State University in New
Haven. His latest book, Plants, was released this summer by
Pearson Publishing Company of Boston. |
In spring and summer, wetlands and waterways come alive with the spectacular colors of aquatic flowers. The yellows and whites of water lilies combine with the violets and blues of grasses and pickerelweed and reds of cardinal flowers to grace the vivid greens of sedges and cattails and bulrushes.
In the late summer and early fall the most spectacular of all wetland flowers is purple loosestrife. It is a tall, showy plant crowned by spiked inflorescences of purple flowers touched with red and pink. Across the northern half of the United States and into southern Canada this classy and colorful plant can be spotted in the most varied of aquatic habitats. It carpets the edges of rivers and the shores of lakes and ponds and covers huge expanses of marshes and other wetlands. Purple loosestrife is so adaptable that it even blankets the seep areas between lanes of interstate highways. But its successful spread across North America has wetland ecologists worried, for purple loosestrife is an unwanted alien that can crowd out valuable native wetland plants and make life harder for wildlife.
Purple loosestrife, Lythrum salicaria, is of European origin. It was introduced into North America in the 1800s, apparently carried in as seeds or rootstocks in ship ballasts that were discarded at ports of call before the return trip. Gardeners, herbalists, and apiculturists also contributed to the plant's early invasion of the wilds of colonial North America through the inadvertent spread of seeds or escapes from private nursery stocks. Gardeners valued the attractive floral displays of purple loosestrife; beekeepers prized the multiflowered plants as a source of nectar and pollen for their honeybee colonies. Before the advent of modern medicine, herbalists used purple loosestrife as an astringent; it stanched the flow of blood, healed and bound wounds and sores, and provided relief from ulcers.
The spread of purple loosestrife in the northeastern United States at first followed major rivers--the Hudson, Delaware, Connecticut, and Raritan. By the midnineteenth century its spread was associated with canal building. The Morris Canal and Delaware and Raritan Canal quickened its dispersal in New Jersey and Pennsylvania; the Erie Canal aided its westward progress across New York and into southern Canada and Michigan.
Since the turn of the century, this rank, aquatic weed has spread throughout much of North America. Today, purple loosestrife is found in all states north of the 35th parallel and northward into the southern provinces of Canada. Its recent
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