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CHS Pikes/Pines | Capitol Hill’s invasive plants you love to hate

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When we live in human altered spaces and inhabit a cultural space dominated by binaries, it’s incredibly easy to create a false dichotomy about the natural world. This stems from a troubling belief that if we are in place like the Hill, are not a part of nature. And, if we travel out to say, an alpine meadow in the Cascades, we’re in nature. We think of unkempt greenspaces on the edges of our urban landscape as awful, non-native, invaded landscapes, and idealize the seemingly natural, wild, or “untrammeled” spaces beyond our fold.

As a biologist and environmental educator, I try to look a little deeper at these things. I was recently walking around the Seattle neighborhood where my parents live and noticed how entirely altered the landscape was. A desert of Scotch broom in the dry sunny lot by I-5. Ivy trailing up the trunks of struggling bigleaf maples. Where we let things go, it was a strange, novel chaos of plants humans have introduced.

Yet, there was beauty too. Hundreds of nearly ripe Himalayan blackberries gleaned from their armored vines. A butterfly bush with a couple swallowtail butterflies tilting about its blooms. I brushed a tall foxglove and showered hundreds of seeds about a weedy, forgotten wayside. I thought to myself: “these three species are not the worst, and certainly have their charms.”

Before digging too deep, I want to say that I am not a botanist, nor a noxious weed controller, nor do I worry too much about what all the nuances of those positions. I do care about so-called natural landscapes and appreciate spaces that are mostly, or at least visibly free of the touch of the post-modern world. My most sincere wish is to see Washington in pre-Columbian times.

Dandelion

However, I want us to appreciate non-native, and even, species considered noxious weeds by the State and the County. For this, I’ll surely get a flurry of comments about how awful these plants are. I frankly don’t care. While I don’t want to see them in those alpine meadows, or far up our watersheds, I also don’t think they’re worth trying to erase from the landscape.

They’re here. Calling them invasive is a cop-out anyway. It vilifies species that are here because of us. I’ve pulled my share of English ivy, but I don’t think it’s an awful plant. What’s awful is that this landscape was colonized. Plants are just being plants. Now we have to live with it.

So let’s appreciate the butterfly bush, Budleia davidii, which is native to Asia and is considered an unregulated Class B noxious weed. This means that no one is required to remove it, but it’s suggested. There’s a reason they’re all over the place, and it’s not just their ability to spread rapidly by seed. We’ve planted them in our gardens, all over Western Washington, for years. They’re hard to remove because they sprout back when cut to their roots and their seeds are viable for years after being released. Yet, I find them pretty shrubs with their long cones of purplish flowers that butterfly species love. At least they don’t produce a toxic oil, or have awful spines all over them.

However, despite providing nectar for butterflies, the Budleia doesn’t do a whole lot else. Most butterflies need host plants for their young to grow on and it isn’t one and generally shades out species that might be. Nectar is great for adults trying to reproduce, but it’s not useful for caterpillars. These grubs end up being vital food for other species, like chickadees for instance. This is the real issue of the invasive creature, the disruption of the landscapes they represent, not merely their existence. They had their place, in a different landscape, we just transposed them elsewhere and figure it would be just fine.

I have mixed feelings about these plants of course. I purposefully brought them up in a manner that may have incited rage in your native-plant bible thumping soul. The real point is that many of us have choices we can make on how we interact with our landscape. We can continue to rip at it, or we can relax a little bit. Focus on the things you can actually change, like a yard you have, and plant natives there. Species that can thrive in our varied climate and don’t need excessive watering. Species that the butterflies will lay their eggs on. Species that a chickadee will later visit when finding food for its young. We shouldn’t necessarily give up on removing noxious weed species, but maybe let them be in the forgotten slopes that surround our homes. When we live in a place dominated by cement, they’re still home for plenty of other organisms (native or not), they’re still green, and even sometimes they offer us a late summer treat of sun-ripened blackberries. Could be worse.

 

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8 Comments
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AJ A-C
AJ A-C
5 years ago

“Focus on the things you can actually change, like a yard you have, and plant natives there. Species that can thrive in our varied climate and don’t need excessive watering. Species that the butterflies will lay their eggs on. Species that a chickadee will later visit when finding food for its young.“

Would you happen to have already written or a list of suggestions you might throw together? Maybe links to other resources, especially for balcony or deck gardens?

NativePlantsStolenLand
NativePlantsStolenLand
5 years ago
Reply to  AJ A-C

There’s lots of resources online. I lived in CapHill for 5 years with only a small deck, and had all sorts of native plants growing in pots (like Red Flowering Current, Huckleberry, Sea Thrift, Monkeyflower, Western Columbine, Pacific Waterleaf, etc…). I get all my native plants from this awesome guy: http://www.gonativesnursery.com/

King County has information resources on native plants: https://www.kingcounty.gov/services/environment/stewardship/nw-yard-and-garden/native-plant-resources-nw.aspx

There’s also the Washington Native Plant Society: https://www.wnps.org/

If you prefer tangible information sources, then there’s also the book “Attracting Native Pollinators” from the Xerces Society: https://xerces.org/announcing-the-publication-of-attracting-native-pollinators/ (book is not specific to just the PNW and there are many sellers who likely carry the book).

To the author of the post, I agree with letting go of certain areas and living with what plants we have (barring the most noxious andaggressively invasive), it just saddens me to see people/businesses not getting native plants for their own outdoor pots/yards. Even the most “progressive nurseries” have only a small fraction of native plants (usually tucked away in a back corner). Seeing the hummingbirds and fluffy bees at my flowers is great but it seems like a extremely small oasis in urban Seattle :-(

AJ A-C
AJ A-C
5 years ago

Thanks for the links!

paul
paul
5 years ago

few native plant suggestions:

A great native few know of that’s useful and easy to grow is Yerba Buena, Clinopodium Douglasii. It’s a native mint that grows via surface runners instead of underground. Native bees like the small white flowers. It makes great tea, grows in sun or shade, could be grown in containers and is drought tolerant.

California Fuchsia (Epilobium canum) is a fantastic summer perennial ground cover native to California and Oregon. Red hummingbird flowers all summer, no water required loves full sun.

Manzanitas (like Kinnickinick but tall) are great shrub /small tree for wildlife if you have a garden. Totally drought tolerant, and winter or spring hummingbird flowers.

Red flowering Currant and other native currants and gooseberries from up/down the West Coast are all fantastic hummingbird flowers for spring.

Hybrid Mahonia selections like the “Wintersun” cultivar are great winter hummingbird flowers. The hybrids aren’t native like spring blooming Oregon Grape but similar (or more attractive) and showcase fragrant winter flowers.

Camas, Triteleia/Brodiaea and Dodecatheon are the best native bulbs to grow for bees and wildlife. Also super showy. You can try growing these in containers but ensure they dry out in summer and receive winter rain and cold.

AJ A-C
AJ A-C
5 years ago
Reply to  paul

Thanks for the suggestions

Evon
Evon
5 years ago

Butterfly bushes pop up out of nowhere and have beautiful bluish purple cone shaped flowers. Within city limits I can’t imagine they are problematic. They can become quite large over a decade and more and can become somewhat like trees. They require no watering in Seattle. Butterflies and bumble bees love them and when they grow large, small birds love to hang out in them. I had no idea they are a foreign plant. Considering how many species like to hang out in these plants I would not recommend removing them.

RWK
RWK
5 years ago

It is my understanding that English ivy only becomes invasive when it is allowed to grow vertically up a tree trunk or other structures, because only then can it form flowers and seeds. The birds eat the latter and scatter the seeds in other locations via their poop.

Neighbor
Neighbor
5 years ago

This is why it’s so important that people be able to distinguish between fact and opinion.