Yellow groove bamboo (Phyllostachys aureosulcata) is now featured on some restaurant menus! The New York Times T Magazine (“What’s Behind the Frenzy Over Bamboo in Cooking?” 10/10/24) described how some restaurants are using foraged pickled and salt-cured bamboo on menus. Tama Matsuoka Wong, a New Jersey based forager who specializes in harvesting invasive edible plants, was featured in the article. Her company is meadows and more.
Started in 2016, the Invasive Species Collaborative at Virginia Tech has been growing quickly to add new faculty positions and promote new collaborations to understand invasive species impacts on society. Director Dr. Jacob Barney is now serving a two-year term on the Federal Invasive Species Advisory Council. On the plant side of invasive species, the Collaborative has faculty in Sociology, Plant and Environmental Sciences, Entomology, Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Fish and Wildlife Conservation, Agricultural Leadership and Community Education, and Industrial and Systems Engineering. Sign up for their newsletter to learn about their great work!
I’ve listened to and participated in many discussions about how to outcompete invasive plants using native plant species. Competition could be used to prevent new invasions or to aid in restoration after removing invasive plants. A recent article in Restoration Ecology reports results of a sowing study done in Hungary looking at native grassland species competing against three different invasive plant species. They note that the timing of seed germination of the native and invasive species was similar and that as you might expect, high seeding rates of the native species increased their early competitive ability. A perennial grass species was the most competitive against the three (non-grass) invasive plant species.
Csákvári, E., Sáradi, N., Berki, B., Csecserits, A., Csonka, A.C., Reis, B.P., Török, K., Valkó, O., Vörös, M. and Halassy, M. (2023), Native species can reduce the establishment of invasive alien species if sown in high density and using competitive species. Restor Ecol, 31: e13901. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13901
Introduced as an ornamental plant, and perhaps also accidentally introduced through ballast, flowering rush, Butomus umbellatus, has spread into lakes, ponds, marshes, and irrigation ditches across southern Canada and the northern United States. Several characteristics make it a great invader. It comes in two forms, a flowering diploid and a seldom-flowering triploid. Although diploid populations produce numerous seeds, both types tend to spread mainly through vegetative reproduction. They both produce rhizome buds that easily break off and float to new sites. Diploids also produce vegetative bulbils in the inflorescences. They can grow submerged, although their biomass declines in deeper water. The plant is hardy to zone 3, and in its native Europe grows from Spain to Finland.
When it isn’t flowering, the leaves tend to blend in among other aquatic vegetation like cattails, sweet flag, burr-reed, and iris. The sword-like leaves are weakly triangular in cross section.
Dr. John D. Madsen, researcher with USDA ARS, has been studying control methods for flowering rush and has several papers published on chemical, mechanical, and drawdown techniques, https://www.researchgate.net/project/Biology-and-management-of-flowering-rush-Butomus-umbellatus.
Still sold in the nursery trade, the plant is listed as a noxious weed in several states.
My dad was out kayaking on a slough near Newport, OR with some botanists and learned
Japanese eelgrass rests on the muddy edge of a slough near Newport, OR.
about Japanese (or dwarf) eelgrass, Zostera japonica. It often occurs in the same locations as the native common eelgrass, Z. maritima, but higher in the intertidal if both species are present. It has narrower and shorter leaf blades than common eelgrass.
Japanese eelgrass probably arrived in the 1930s in shipments of Pacific oysters. It reproduces prolifically by seed and spreads by rhizomes. It has established from Humboldt Bay in CA north to the Strait of Georgia in Canada.
You can read an excellent summary about this eelgrass written by Levy Hay at University of Washington in 2011.
In another couple months the tumbleweeds will be rolling along in the western United States. Wells and Ellstrand (2016) at the University of California – Riverside documented a new hybrid species of tumbleweed, Salsola ryanii, rapidly expanding its range. Salsola ryanii is an allopolyploid species with 2 complete sets of genes from its parent species, S. tragus and S. australis.
Spring is here and along with it some of the more edible invasive plants. Anyone for a dish of knotweed kimchi or garlic mustard pesto pasta? Pittsburgh has gone to great lengths developing edible uses for Japanese knotweed, Fallopia japonica. One business sells it by the pound to enterprising brewers and bakers. Watch a video from the Wall Street Journal on Pittsburgh’s knotweed gourmets here, http://on.wsj.com/1YRN9g2.
The ultimate online resource for eating invasive plants (and animals) is probably Eat the Invaders. Here you can find all sorts of information and recipes on edible invaders. Bon appetit!
According to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation Murdannia has no known common name and generally goes by Anielema, its former Latin name. The USDA PLANTS website calls it wartremoving herb and Invasive.org calls it marsh dayflower. Maryland Extension calls it marsh dewflower or Asiatic dayflower. The leaves and stems do resemble Asiatic dayflower (Commelina communis). I don’t know about it’s wart-removing powers.
Murdannia keisak in a marsh on the Maryland Coastal Plain.
Look for mats of Murdannia keisak in freshwater ponds and marshes and along the edges of streams and canals. It probably arrived in the US from eatern Asia in the 1920s or 30s as a weed of rice cultivation but it has unfortunately spread to natural areas. It forms dense mats blocking light to plants below. Plants produce thousands of small seeds eaten by ducks and other waterfowl, and the plants spread vegetatively.
Small stands could be hand-pulled before flowering taking care to remove all fragments of the plant. Larger stands are usually treated using biodegradable herbicides.
