REP

there was a very good article that got shared around here a while ago about how kudzu -- the weed so explosively invasive it consumed the southern US – is actually not that big of a problem, and that it's mostly just prolific in the bad soils, bright sunshine and polluted air of roadsides, so you see it from the road. when you learn more about it, it turns out kudzu isn't a weed, its a pioneer plant – it thrives in nutrient-poor soil, extending roots deep into the ground to dredge up otherwise inaccessible nutrients to make them available for other plants. in its normal habitat, it produces richer, more welcoming soils that other plants take root in, and eventually it gets shaded over and dies back, its job done. the reason they're "invasive" is because its job is never permitted to be done. you provide ideal habitats – barren sunny roadsides or golf greens with nutrient-poor soil and one hyperspecific cultivar of grass – and it dutifully colonises it to begin enriching the ecosystem, only to be beaten back. the kudzu is removed, restoring the habitat back to its barren, pristine state, primed and ready for the kudzu to come again. so it does, and you end up locked in sisyphean battle that only the kudzu can ever win.

we don't have kudzu here but dandelions are considered the most noxious of weeds. but dandelions thrive in nutrient-poor soil, extending roots deep into the ground to dredge up otherwise inaccessible nutrients to make them available for other plants. in my garden, they relentlessly spring up in the old cracks in the concrete, defiantly growing in even the tiniest available space. ive begun to understand that they are not nasty little pests; they're vanguards, holding open the space within which others might one day grow. the cracks have grown wider over the years, forced open by each new year of dandelions. i think i might stop fighting them.

hi! don't mean to get like confrontational, because yes, there is no such thing as a 'weed' in the colloquial term.

but all plants that grow like weeds are not 'good'. Granted, no plants are fundamentally moral, but we'll set that aside for now.

the thing that a lot of folks miss when it comes to weeds and invasive plants are this: it is not necessarily considered an invasive because it's harmful to humans. (i also want to acknowledge that we can be talking on different scales here, so take that as it may) invasive plants are VERY harmful to both other native plants, as well as a lot of our fundamental keystones of ecology.

I don't want to research this too in depth and get 'in the weeds' (ha), but i'll go with a super basic example: Tree of Heaven

Tree of heaven is a tree you've probably seen growing on the side of a road somewhere. It's these fucks.

Now, I love a tree, but these are a vicious invasive. And yes, while they can still provide some benefits that trees do provide, there's a few problems with them.

1. They are loved by the spotted lantern fly for mating/reproduction. This bug is bad. Do you like fruits? Wood? They represent a thread to many ecosystem services, both native and introduced, that we hold dear.

2. They are one of the many invasive trees that are allelopathic. Another species in a similar vein (though I don't know if it's by allelopathy) is Eucalyptus. The leaf litter, and all matter in this tree, produce toxins that can inhibit the seedling growth of native plants like red oak, sugar maple, and other native hardwoods. Here's some compiled info from the forest service: https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/tree/ailalt/all.html#ImpactsAndControl

3. From a human-centered point of view - these trees stink. Literally! They let off an odor from leaves and bark that's been rubbed that smells like rotten walnuts. It's awful.

I don't want to belabor the point, and I appreciate the original heart of the message in this original post, but invasive plants and even some "weeds" can indeed cause ecological harm. Many animals rely on the native plants we have to flourish, and while some can adapt to altered browsing conditions, not all can. The example of kudzu is good. It is a nitrogen fixer! It's a great plant to amend soil! It also chokes out other plants like no one's business. And especially can inhibit tree/forest growth unless it's left for tens of years. Many tree seedlings don't like to sprout under total shade, and kudzu is really good at creating conditions that make it hard to establish native trees and other plants in.

Ultimately, it's good to rethink our approach to weeds and invasive plants, yes. In some capacity. But nothing can be black and white here. Thank you for the original post<3

i am sure we can correct our thinking on some species labelled as weeds/invasive plants. that said,

dandelions literally poison the soil to help them compete

like yeah they thrive in nutrient poor soil but they do it partially via releasing compounds that inhibit germination of other seeds. and also they WILL try to take over perfectly rich soil. i have to weed them constantly bc it feels like if i turn my back my small herb garden is covered in them. and this is healthy soil with healthy established plants.

and don’t even get me started on morning glory. my NEIGHBOR PLANTED THEM AND LITERALLY IS THE REASON I HAVE TO HIRE LANDSCAPERS BC IT NEARLY KILLED MY ENTIRE GARDEN. literally had to use a native plan specialist to figure out aggressive enough local plants that could take having to compete with these hyper growth invasive fuckers.

invasive species can be a healthy part of their native ecology but absolutely dominate outside of it.

native grey squirrels are a total normal part of the PNW, but the invasive eastern grey squirrels (brought into pacific cities to “add back in wildlife”) are way more aggro and are consistently outcompeting the natives.

also also pnw folks can tell you what HELL is: the Himalayan Blackberry. those fuckers require like heavy leathers and chainsaws to actually do anything in a reasonable amount of time. the bush branches ROOT LIKE VINES.

For most observers the term "Invasive Species" is a pointed and deliberate one, albeit one that has only a vaguely academic description. I wanna get into why the definition and its use is important context, but this thread is so long so I'm putting that all under the break.

For our purposes of Ecological Preservation, Invasive Species are Flora and Fauna introduced to an environment by human action, where said Ecosystem has no immediate viable predator or competition. Invasive Species can be ultimately not that successful in the wild, but there are lots of examples of well-adapted animals proliferating across the U.S. in regions matching their native climes. Most immediately available in my mind are the various Pythons, Chameleons, and Tokay Geckos of the Florida Everglades, but you may recall in the recent years that we've got at least two newer high-profile examples: Joro Spiders, and of course the famous "murder hornet", and you'll note immediately that they're arthropods. Insects and arachnids excel at moving house due to habitation in shipping containers and their broadly quick reproduction cycle, there's a lot of different examples of just how good at this they are.

The coolest terrestrial invertebrates out there (arachnids and eusocial insects) do very well at finding their way into basically any foothold they can wriggle into, this list of invasive ant species can give you just a little slice of just how widespread the phenomena is. Web-spinning Spiders and Hive-making Eusocial Insects are a lot like us, they can make hard situations work by bunkering down and fortifying themselves, gradually feeling out how to get at valuable resources. Plants end up doing pretty well in foreign environments also thanks to us constantly taking them to places they certainly are not native to and going "I need a row of cash crops right here". Thanks to our agricultural technology, our plants are often picked based on industrial applications for profit. We're not bad about picking good candidates for novel environments to grow them in either, non-native species can take root remarkably fast because we'll make it work, and as far as footholds go, few things work like human intervention. The thing I was taught in University was that "humans reduce the biological complexity of every ecosystem they enter", often y'know, for profit.. That sort of makes us the uh, ultimate invasive species, but naturally the eugenics involved to "rectify" that issue are not for discussion today.

As you might have guessed, broadly speaking humans are at the center of the current problem and have been since first contact between European Explorers of the Old World upon their arrival to the New World (and other isolated environments such as the Pacific Islands and Australia). When I was doing classes at the University of Arizona we ran through a few examples, the most immediate on my mind is how (of all things) fucking Prickly Pear Cactus was introduced to Australia. You can check out this website for a quick summary of how that goes. TLDR: the Australian government released a Moth species that completes its lifecycle within the cactus, and this worked pretty well. Targeted use of specific parasitic animals to combat other invasive species is of course like any and all forms of biological warfare: it can have unexpected consequences even though it seems to be pretty airtight as a strategy of pest control. Impressed by the success in Australia, moths of similar species were sent to the Caribbean (here's a PDF with quick points about that) and those naturally through proximity or by ship, made their way to North America again, and are now part of the invasive species landscape here in the U.S., here's a Texas news video story about that.

So, a quick reason as to why I wanted to chime in is that natural habitats are already under strain by the presence of Humans. Climate Change and Pollution make up the bulk of our destructive push-pressure contribution for ecosystems to be vulnerable, but habitat loss is also one of the bigger reasons animals go extinct or move from region to region. Increasingly, we encroach on natural areas whose complexity has not yet been reduced to our industrial requirements. This has introduced new diseases spreading from populations such as Ticks near the U.S. North East, as an immediate example of the action in real time. The government and voting citizenry are really the only ones who possess the societal action levers that can help address the grander problem. If you don't know a few off hand already, reach out to your local wildlife preservation organizations to learn what species introduced to your region are considered invasive. Here in Tucson, organizations work nearly year-round to root out Bufflelgrass, an African/Middle Eastern/Asian grass species introduced for cattle grazing purposes that has naturally gotten way out of hand and threatens to out compete dozens of native fauna. Shockingly enough, populations of this grass have apparently made it to and rooted in Hawai'i! You'll note this type of grass is very good at spreading after fires, and its populations contribute to brushfire intensity.

So as always, I recommend people to become familiar with the flora and fauna in their region. You don't need to be on a first name basis with every tree out there, but knowing whether or not that funny looking flower or weird colored bug belongs in your garden can be extremely helpful to your community. The detection and deterrence of known and properly categorized invasive species falls to amateur observers in a huge part. Not everyone will survive their University's Biostatistics coursework, but even the math-illiterate of us can contribute to the numbers game that is interaction of species and ecosystems in macro.

Amusing additional thoughts:
During my time at the University of Arizona, I was foolishy engaged in a double-major program that paired my Psychology education with the far more difficult courseload of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. I emphasize it was more difficult as labwork in Psychology courses isn't really that hard compared to the math-heavy, direct mechanism laiden, terminology riddled field of EEB. From field labs to utilizing mathematical models to predict distributions of native flora and fauna, EEB is no small matter and honestly we all should be thanking our local Ecologists. Aside from flunking Biostats (seriously, I thought Biochem was bad until I got to Biostats and I even can do mild Stats work for Psychology Research), I did pay the price of pain largely through blowing out both knees during field work for my labs. Ultimately that injury made me switch to Sociology, I still wish I could've finished that out.

You can't do EEB seriously without being studious, active, and honestly brave (it is the wilderness out there, afterall). Sort of like Astronauts, the people who are needed to help us understand our impact on the planet are remarkably low in number and often ignored. That along with many other things has to change quickly and you can do your part too through helping increase the number of well-reasoned and informed voices. Spending some time learning about your local ecosystem is often pretty fun too, especially if you like hiking. Just be sure to know about any possible risks and how to handle them, hydrate, do stretches, and don't inherit any rare genetic abnormalities that make your ligaments much less flexible than they should be. You're the first line of defense to help manage and report invasive species and preserve (what remains of) your ecosystem, I don't think anyone can stress that enough. There's a lot of non-profit or publicly funded groups out there working to combat invasive species, and usually plenty of literature to engage with.

Recently I started familiarizing myself with the fauna of British Columbia, which in probably a few months will be my permanent home. It's quite the change from the Sonoran Desert where I've spent nearly 30 years of my life, and like any sane person with a healthy and complicated relationship to invertebrates, I started with Spiders. BC has many species of spider to become acquainted with and paradoxically it's the kind of spiders that absolutely wig me out. Arizona's spiders have a lot of range, but you're usually confronted with spiders under the size of a Quarter, or way past a Dollar coin's size. Tucson, Az's Arachnid population is actually pretty crazy and the region is considered one of the most biodiverse environments in the continental U.S., so creepy and crawly tend to be part of the life. Spiders are kind of like, the most cool household friends you can have, and if you don't have my weird problem of struggling with being spooked by spiders between the sizes of a quarter and dollar coin, you might really like the youtube channel that covers the spiders in your house. Really the most useful thing for the average U.S. citizen reading this is probably this last link about spiders, lmao.

Much love, thanks for reading, get a look at the cool shit outside and be safe out there.