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On a crisp, blue-sky day in autumn, I took a walk with friends and guests in the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge just 10 miles east as the crow flies from Manhattan.  The friends were people from my neighborhood I’d known for several years. The guests were unwelcome visitors from China, Japan and South America. I watched as my friend took a knife and slashed one of the guests. My friend was frustrated. “This actually does nothing. It will be back bigger and stronger in a few weeks.”

My friend, Michael, is a botanist for the City of New York, and his passion belongs to plants who shouldn’t be here. He calls them non-native, invasive plants, and some of them are downright insidious. “The Asian Bittersweet actually strangles native trees,” he says as he points to a tree with deep scars corkscrewing their way up the trunk. Someone had attempted to save this tree by cutting down the Bittersweet. Many other trees were less lucky, having succumbed long ago.

Plants native to a certain area have evolved for thousands of years to be in balance with their ecosystem. They will provide food for insects, birds and small mammals. It can chemically defend their turf from other native plants. They supply nutrients to the soil. But a non-native invasive shares none of these characterstics. Non-native invasives swoop in without predators and decimate an area’s diversity, leaving an area virtually deserted of natural flora.

Michael began his professional career teaching English in China and working aboard river cruises. He came back to the States and took a few jobs utilizing his bilingual ability. About two years ago, something sparked an interest that developed into an outright passion. Michael would spend hours studying plants, learning how to recognize them and how to decipher which ones were native and which ones unwelcome guests. He speaks with unbridled enthusiasm and reaches far into his now near-encyclopedic storehouse of New York City plant knowledge to identify, and, on this Sunday morning, teach.

“There are whole areas where native species are effectively gone,” says Michael. And this isn’t a New York City problem. Two centuries of global travel have spread plants throughout the world. Visitors to the American south have come across a rather noxious vine called Kudzu. Kudzu spreads over everything, literally sucking the nutrients out of the soil for itself. Where it lives, little else does. Cut it down, it comes back. Cut it down again, it comes back twice as bad. And Kudzu has been steadily marching north, some of it even making an entrance in New York, though as of yet it does not have a foothold.

In Earth’s past, about one or two non-native invasives would cross geographic boundaries and slowly begin incorporation into the environment. This changed when improved shipping, trains, and airplanes brought stowaway seeds far from their native territory. The problem was accelerated even further when tradesmen opened new markets for exotic plants. “One of the biggest problems with Asian Bittersweet is that it is kind of pretty…it makes a great Christmas wreath,” says Michael.

Even worse, many nurseries sell non-native invasives. Legislation is weak, and even experts don’t fully agree on the best use or destruction of these plants. Fire, which was all but banned in the United States 60 years ago, used to be an effective measure against invasive species. Now cutting and herbicdes are used with mixed effectiveness. Lack of funds, resources and clear cut guidelines about non-native invasives have helped to spread these plants and diminish native territory.

“So what?” I ask Michael. “Survival of the fittest, right? What will happen if we let the non-natives win?”

Michael smirks, seemingly familiar with my brand of naiveté. After all, I am an outsider who until this day saw plants as green things, just ‘there’ in the background. I was unfamiliar with their back stories and their heroic fights to the death. Those things happen in “plant time”, over the course of a few seasons. There’s no dramatic video or pictures, no sounds to be heard. Just before and after pictures that, if you know how to look, show remarkable devastation.

“This matters if you’re a fan of diversity,” Michael says after some careful thought. “We are just beginning to understand all of the relationships we see here. What scares me more than what I know we’ll lose is what I don’t know we’ll lose.”

About halfway through the walk, one of my son’s friends spots an interesting plant peeking out of the ground. He asks Mike what it is. For the first time all day, Mike is stumped. He becomes obsessed with this new variety, unseen by his eyes. He opens a guidebook he always carries, but can’t find the answer. He takes notes and pictures and even a small sample that has fallen to the ground. Later that night, I receive an e-mail from him:

“It took a while to ID the mystery purple five-petaled woody vine. I checked three books and then had to consult with an expert. It turns out it was Chinese matrimony vine – a plant I’ve never seen before, but one which I’ve eaten many times. Its dried fruits look like orange-red raisins, and it’s frequently used in Chinese cuisine, especially nutritious soups. You can buy the fruits in Chinatown. Although it’s not native, its very uncommon in our area.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2008 at 12:39 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.