plant it once, have it forever

There’s a promi­nent North­ern Cal­i­for­nia nurs­ery* that adver­tises on its web­site that a vari­ety will self-sow and nat­u­ral­ize. Or in its peppy, enthu­si­as­tic way: “Reseeds!” One of the plants so listed has a fol­lowup note: “Due to agri­cul­tural restric­tions, we can­not ship this plant to Arkansas, New Jer­sey, New York, Okla­homa, South Car­olina, and Texas.”

Read between the lines: This plant, under the right con­di­tions, might just run wild, out of con­trol, and take over your gar­den or an ecosys­tem! (Not all plant restric­tions are based on their inva­sive poten­tial, how­ever. For instance, some might be con­trolled because of known pests or dis­eases the species may harbor.)

Over the years I’ve added inter­est­ing plants to the gar­den, only to have them sow and prop­a­gate them­selves all over the gar­den. For most of these, I don’t worry huge amounts that they’ll escape to the nearby wilds because they’re wimps when not pam­pered in a gar­den, but with reg­u­lar water­ing they’re aggres­sive thugs. Pretty thugs, to be sure. But still thugs.

Here are a few of my mis­takes. Some are merely annoy­ing. Oth­ers require mul­ti­ple hours of labor every year to keep under con­trol. Colder areas might not have the same prob­lems with these that I do, but I’m sure you have your own mon­sters. (My apolo­gies in advance to the fine nation of Mex­ico. I just noticed that four of my selec­tions have “Mex­i­can” in their com­mon names…)

Mex­i­can petu­nia (Ruel­lia brit­to­ni­ana). Pretty, tough. Also pretty tough to erad­i­cate in my gar­den once it got a foothold. I should have paid atten­tion when the guy at the plant sale warned me that it might spread. Accord­ing to Flori­data, “Mex­i­can petu­nia is listed as a Cat­e­gory I inva­sive species by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Coun­cil. This means that it is ‘alter­ing native plant com­mu­ni­ties by dis­plac­ing native species, chang­ing com­mu­nity struc­tures or eco­log­i­cal func­tions, or hybridiz­ing with natives.’ This warn­ing applies to all parts of the state of Florida (and other areas with sim­i­lar mild cli­mates). Where hardy, the Mex­i­can petu­nia excels at invad­ing wet­lands.” It also can be a nui­sance in a dry gar­den like mine where it spreads under­ground and via explod­ing seed pods.

Mex­i­can fan palm (Wash­ing­to­nia robusta). Maybe it’s a uniquely Cal­i­for­nia thing: You go out to the gar­den to pull weeds, and along with the crab­grass and spurge, you end up pulling up lit­tle palm trees. Folks in colder climes might be thrilled to have some of these, but here they’re a nui­sance. Our Mex­i­can fan came with the house, and it took us a few years to finally remove it. All that time we were yank­ing baby palms all over the front yard, and the seed­bank remained viable for sev­eral years afterward.

Mex­i­can feather grass (Nas­sella tenuis­sima). I’ve dinged this plant sev­eral times before. I won’t add any­thing more here other than to note that I’ve prob­a­bly pulled up a hun­dred seedlings this sea­son. At least this is down from the orgy of seedlings that I had when there was a harem of adult plants in the gar­den that appar­ently had noth­ing on their mind except sex and reproduction.

Mex­i­can evening prim­rose (Oenothera species, I think it was O. spe­ciosa). I was on vaca­tion at the Grand Canyon in 1991. Inno­cently I bought a packet of seeds of these that were sold as a “wild­flower.” I was thrilled when they came up the first year and I had a gre­gar­i­ous patch of del­i­cate bright pink flow­ers where there’d been a patch of dirt pre­vi­ously. Lit­tle did I know they’d resow and spread by under­ground run­ners and con­tinue to annoy me to this day. Wild flower, indeed.

Sweet alyssum (Lob­u­laria mar­itima). Don’t let the “sweet” in its com­mon name fool you. I con­tinue to weed alyssum seedlings pop­ping up around the gar­den from a sin­gle packet of mixed col­ors I planted in the late 1980s.

Fort­night lily (Dietes irid­ioides). A few clumps of these came with the house. The tough, hard seeds lay dor­mant in the ground for years and plague you with unwanted seedlings long after you’ve removed their source.

Calla lily (Zant­edeschia aethiopica). I’ll have to admit that I have a soft spot for these plants and don’t pull them out the same way I pull out other unwel­come plants. My parent’s house came with a fifty-foot foun­da­tion plant­ing of them on the north side of their house. The way the plant can spread, how­ever, now makes me think the pre­vi­ous own­ers might have started with just a half dozen plants. Feral callas are plants of con­cern in some Cal­i­for­nia wet­lands. A cou­ple well-watered gar­den spots seem to gen­er­ate calla lilies out of thin air.

Epa­zote (Dys­pha­nia ambro­sioides). I won’t quite call plant­ing this Mex­i­can herb a mis­take, since I use occa­sion­ally in cook­ing. It does spread about the gar­den a bit, how­ever, and pops up in unex­pected places. There are reports [ includ­ing this one ] that it’s col­o­nized parts of New York’s Cen­tral Park–though that’s not my doing. I popped over to Wikipedia and learned this pretty inter­est­ing detail I’d never heard before: “Epa­zote essen­tial oil con­tains ascari­dole…; in pure form, it is an explo­sive sen­si­tive to shock.” Botan­i­cal TNT–Wild!

To my mis­takes, I’ll add some native Cal­i­for­nia annu­als and peren­ni­als that have been really suc­cess­ful in repro­duc­ing them­selves in my gar­den. Cur­rently, my plants are wan­der­ing around an area where they’re desired and haven’t escaped far. I won’t call them mis­takes at this point, but I can see that they could become unwel­come in some situations.

Cal­i­for­nia pop­pies (Escholzia cal­i­for­nica). What? Our sacred state flower?! Well, there are some unwel­come escaped colonies in Chile and Aus­tralia. And the seeds reg­u­larly find their way into cracks in the pavement.

Baby blue eyes (Nemophila men­ziesii). Not really what I’d call a thug, though these seem to be pretty suc­cess­ful at repro­duc­ing them­selves. It’s easy to pull out the occa­sional unwanted plants, but who’d want to?

Clarkia (Clarkia spp.). I haven’t grown many clarkia species, but the one that seems to wan­der around the most for me is C. rubi­cunda ssp. blas­dalei.

*There’s a good chance you’ll have guessed the iden­tity of this well-known nurs­ery if you’ve spent any time at its web­site. I don’t mean to diss them at all. You can get poten­tially ram­bunc­tious plants from vir­tu­ally all nurs­eries, includ­ing those ded­i­cated to native plants.

April 03 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • •

10 Responses to “plant it once, have it forever”

  1. James Golden on 03 Apr 2010 at 8:31 am #

    Only one of these seems to make an impact in the North­east. Epa­zote is a com­mon “weed” in and along the side­walks in Brooklyn.

  2. Dirty Girl Gardening on 03 Apr 2010 at 9:40 am #

    Yes, that mex­i­can feather grass gets out of con­trol! But pretty by the coast.

  3. Town Mouse on 03 Apr 2010 at 10:25 am #

    A timely post! Let’s add to that a Per­si­caria that I bought from a nurs­ery that swore that this par­tic­u­lar Per­si­caria was not inva­sive at all. Well, I dug it out and spent the next sum­mer dig­ging up run­ners in a no-water sit­u­a­tion. I think that did it, though.

    And don’t get me started on the mex­i­can feather grass…

  4. Gayle Madwin on 03 Apr 2010 at 1:52 pm #

    My gar­den­ing is still at such an early stage that it’s thrilling to me if any plant man­ages to repro­duce itself, and I haven’t yet regret­ted any of them. The plants that have sprouted fairly abun­dantly from seeds I’ve scat­tered on the ground include Clarkia unguic­u­lata, Collinsia het­ero­phylla, Eschscholzia cal­i­for­nica, Layia platy­glossa, Lupi­nus nanus, Lupi­nus suc­cu­len­tus, and Nemophila men­ziesii. Those are all fairly pre­dictable can­di­dates, but some other pre­dictable can­di­dates haven’t been as suc­cess­ful. For exam­ple, Las­the­nia cal­i­for­nica sprouted abun­dantly in pots for me, but I only got one or two sur­viv­ing seedlings from the seeds I scat­tered directly on the ground.

    We have a sin­gle sweet alyssum plant with pur­ple flow­ers that has been here for years and has only ever pro­duced one seedling that I’ve noticed, and that one seedling didn’t sur­vive. Our alyssum is under the front porch roof, with heavy shade, lit­tle water, and sur­rounded on two sides by cement, which may help explain why it’s not spreading.

  5. ryan on 03 Apr 2010 at 1:52 pm #

    I had to explain to my aunt the sig­nif­i­cance of “Due to agri­cul­tural restric­tions…” I like that nurs­ery and it’s one of our main sources for plants, but the web­site is some­times a lit­tle like mex­i­can feather grass or oenothera, seduc­ing you with all that beauty… It has a lot of good info, but also requires a cer­tain amount of read­ing between the lines.
    I wish I could get Baby Blue Eyes to reseed in my garden.

  6. susan morrison on 03 Apr 2010 at 5:21 pm #

    Mex­i­can Evening Prim­rose is the WORST! One of my mas­ter gar­dener friends who has been on the bring­ing back the natives tour sev­eral times makes a point of adding a sign explain­ing how inva­sive it is out of fear vis­i­tors will race home and plant it.

    I know you and TM will strongly dis­ap­prove, but I must con­fess I still use Mex­i­can Feather Grass on occa­sion in smaller, pro­tected gar­dens. Is there any other plant that has that same gor­geous wheat color? And don’t sug­gest Carex, my clients always think I ordered them a dead plant when they see it.

  7. Alice Joyce on 04 Apr 2010 at 12:51 pm #

    James,
    Just yes­ter­day I was bemoan­ing Lirope ‘Sil­ver Dragon,’ not a plant that self-sows, but rather, runs and runs below ground!!
    On the other hand, Cerinthe has now nat­u­ral­ized and I’m enjoy­ing its best year ever in my Spring gar­den.
    btw …I won­der if you noticed that although Mex­i­can feather grass is con­sid­ered inva­sive, it is planted as a major ele­ment at Cor­ner­stone Sonoma in the Van Swe­den gar­den AND the Pamela Bur­ton instal­la­tion. Cheers,
    Alice

  8. Arleen Webster/Camissonia's Corner on 04 Apr 2010 at 7:21 pm #

    Great post. I know of the Nor­Cal nurs­ery you are refer­ring to, as I’ve been a reg­u­lar cus­tomer of theirs for the past 3 years. Indeed, I’ve raised my own eye­brows over their peppy mantra of “Reseeds,” as reseed­ing with reck­less aban­don is not nec­es­sar­ily a desir­able trait for any gar­den plant, native or non. But I still love their selec­tions of native annu­als (includ­ing the Clarkias), which have “gen­tly” reseeded within the con­fines of my annual wild­flower bed.

    Epa­zote is another story. I love Mex­i­can food so planted one in my herb gar­den a cou­ple years ago. It flour­ished, flow­ered, and dis­sem­i­nated its seeds EVERYWHERE. So in my book, it’s now offi­cially a weed.

  9. Pomona Belvedere on 11 Apr 2010 at 11:11 am #

    James, great sub­ject to raise in spring, when fan­tasies flour­ish as much as poten­tial weeds.

    Epa­zote! an herb I have tried, and failed, to grow. I always think it’s funny how one person’s weed is another person’s dif­fi­cult plant — though obvi­ously some of the plants here are a lit­tle more seri­ous than that.

    Nemophila men­ziesii (and also N. mac­u­lata) aren’t dan­ger­ous if you plant them in a place that doesn’t get sum­mer water­ing. They both grow wild here but are never inva­sive; I try to “help” along colonies by seed­ing around where I live.

  10. Christine on 11 Apr 2010 at 5:08 pm #

    I guess it’s loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion. I’m still try­ing to get over see­ing broom for sale at a local nurs­ery. You are apt to notice that “reseeds” and “inva­sive” are really the same thing… Wish there was some sort of truth in label­ing pro­gram at all the nurs­eries. I sec­ond Ryan on Baby Blue Eyes envy. They have no love for me!

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