I Learn About Invasive Species

Not too long ago, my Master Gardener (MG) group, the North Georgia Master Gardeners, held a two day workshop on invasive species that threaten the North Georgia ecosystem. Yeah, I know, it’s not exactly Debbie Does Dallas stuff. More like Japanese knotweed does Georgia.

I attended the workshop even though I cannot identify more than eight native plants or shrubs. I’m okay on vegetables but not so hot on the other stuff. In my defense, a lot of plants and shrubs look the same, and you need an incredible memory and an eye for fine detail to differentiate them. The fact that ninety percent of them are harmless and will make absolutely no difference in my life reduces my urgency to know what the bush next to the porch really is. I mean, when’s the last time you heard on the five o’clock news that a Drooping Leucothoe or a Dwarf Fothergilla robbed a bank, ran a stop sign and killed a mother of four or committed welfare fraud? I figure it’s enough to recognize which plants have thorns or give you a rash. Please don’t let the MG’s know about this. They would probably strip me of my trowel and drum me out of their ranks.

There’s a chance I would have attended the workshop regardless, but the truth is that I was compelled to be there. You see, I agreed to be a vice president of the group months ago, and it was only later that I learned I was in charge of organizing educational programs. That was in the fine print in the bylaws. As a result, when we got the opportunity to have this workshop I was automatically the MG in charge. That’s MGIC for you with a military bent. Anyway, I couldn’t very well not attend.

I was glad I went, I think. I learned that there are many, many invasive species—animal, plant, insect and disease—that threaten North Georgia’s native species. Now I can recognize three or four invasive plants. As for the rest (and there are a lot of them), I’m clueless. The only way I’m going to identify the other invasive species is if they’re wearing a name tag or are in the custody of an INS agent. But, hey, at least I’m aware that it’s an issue. I’ll never be able to look on a beautiful sylvan scene again without wondering how many illegal aliens, er, I mean, undocumented plant visitors there are.

Many of the invasive species come from Asia, and their common names of show it: Chinese privet, Japanese honeysuckle, Japanese climbing fern, Japanese stiltgrass, Chinese tallowtree, Chinese wisteria, etc.

I have to admit to having a certain prejudice against things oriental. Maybe I read too many war histories when I was young but I’m still angry over Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, kamikaze attacks and Iwo Jima. Diversity training be damned, I just don’t trust the little bastards. They’re still eating with sticks, for God’s sake. You’d think that by now they’d realize that food stays on a fork a lot better than it does on a stick. As far as I’m concerned, the only things good that came out of the Orient are Chinese take-out food, pad thai, the Nissan 240Z, Casio watches and ben-wa balls. So I hope that there are gardeners in China and Japan who are having workshops on invasive species with American names like the American beetle, U.S. poison ivy and Yankee nettle. Serves the sneaky bastards right.

The workshop was taught by the Invasive Species Coordinator for the University of Georgia’s Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health. (With a name like that you’d think the center was larger than the Pentagon.) She was very knowledgeable, and fighting invasive species is her cause. The short version of her message is that invasive species out-compete native species causing the native species to die which brings an end to the ecosystem and then we all die. Well, that may be a little overstated but her message was more doom and gloom than uplifting or optimistic.

My first thought was let’s do something about it. But when she told us about the number of acres affected by the problem, I realized the enormity of the task. Take kudzu, the vine that ate the South. By one estimate there were 227,000 acres of kudzu in southern forests in 2010, and it is spreading at the rate of 2,500 acres a year. And that’s only the numbers for forests. There’s an estimated 500,000 acres of kudzu in non-forest areas. But that’s peanuts compared to Japanese honeysuckle. In 2010 there was an estimated 10.3 million acres of Japanese honeysuckle in southern forests spreading at the rate of 65,000 acres a year. Holy invasive species, Batman! That’s more than the number of new people who signed for Obamacare this year. From now on I’ll never stand still in the woods for fear of being steamrolled by honeysuckle. It will take more than a few Master Gardeners with a squirt bottle of Roundup to tackle the problem. I guess she had a reason to preach doom and gloom.

In addition to teaching the workshop, she gave an evening lecture where the community was invited. The lecture compressed all the bad news into a one hour talk. I almost felt sorry for the people who attended. They expected a nice little talk on plants only to be told there’s a possibility our ecosystem will collapse because of invasive plants. You could almost hear the people thinking, “Fuck me. Who knew?”

The evening lecture was so well attended that I got to thinking that the MG’s should sponsor a lecture series about topics that would take peoples’ minds off their petty problems: “Thank you for coming tonight. I hope you can attend our next talk on the high probability of a species-ending asteroid strike in the very near future. Other lectures in the series include talks on what happens to humanity when the Yellowstone Caldera erupts, nuclear proliferation, and viruses that threaten human existence.” The lectures would be an opportunity for the MG’s to hand out membership information inviting people to join our merry group. Come and join us if you want to be permanently depressed. Oh, and here’s the number for the suicide prevention line.

So now I’ll have to add invasive species to the list of things to worry about. Whoever said that ignorance is bliss got it right. Sometimes it’s better to bury your head in the sand, particularly if it’s on a Caribbean island and there’s plenty of rum punch.