Invasive Species – Virtues

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” Today, some thoughts on the virtues of invasive plants. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Barney: A lot of this is a matter of perspective. Some of these plants are quite edible or ornamental plants to begin with. So they have some virtue, depending on your perspective.

Jacob Barney is an Associate Professor of Invasive Plant Ecology, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech.

Barney: Right now we’re looking at American Pokeweed. A native plant often not associated with the forest. There’s a lot of foot traffic in here. One of the ways that plants move around is through people’s boots and shoes and pant cuffs. And undoubtedly that’s how this plant got here.
Pokeweed – while most of the plant is poisonous, when it’s young, you can harvest the young shoots, boil them and eat them like asparagus. Also the berries, which are bright deep purple; they were used as a dye by the early Native Americans and early colonizers of North America – to dye fabrics. I would say, the best way to identify pokeweed would be the year before. So you knew it was here last year. It’s perennial. It’ll come back from the same root stocks. It’ll come back and you’ll harvest it from that same location.

But most farmers are more interested in getting rid of pokeweed than in harvesting it.

Barney: Because if it contaminates, for example, a soy bean crop, it can stain the soy beans and then the grain elevator would reject that shipment because of the stained soybeans.
Managing invasive plants is really challenging. For many of them, it’s not as simple as just killing the above-ground material. In many cases, if you cut it and don’t do anything more than that, it’ll re-sprout from its roots and it starts all over again. Invasive plant management is really a long term investment over time.

We’ll hear more about some of the virtues of invasive species in future programs. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Invasive Species - Virtues

"A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."

Air Date:03/29/2017

Scientist:

Transcript:

Invasive Species - Virtues

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." Today, some thoughts on the virtues of invasive plants. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Barney: A lot of this is a matter of perspective. Some of these plants are quite edible or ornamental plants to begin with. So they have some virtue, depending on your perspective.

Jacob Barney is an Associate Professor of Invasive Plant Ecology, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Virginia Tech.

Barney: Right now we're looking at American Pokeweed. A native plant often not associated with the forest. There's a lot of foot traffic in here. One of the ways that plants move around is through people's boots and shoes and pant cuffs. And undoubtedly that's how this plant got here.
Pokeweed - while most of the plant is poisonous, when it's young, you can harvest the young shoots, boil them and eat them like asparagus. Also the berries, which are bright deep purple; they were used as a dye by the early Native Americans and early colonizers of North America - to dye fabrics. I would say, the best way to identify pokeweed would be the year before. So you knew it was here last year. It's perennial. It'll come back from the same root stocks. It'll come back and you'll harvest it from that same location.

But most farmers are more interested in getting rid of pokeweed than in harvesting it.

Barney: Because if it contaminates, for example, a soy bean crop, it can stain the soy beans and then the grain elevator would reject that shipment because of the stained soybeans.
Managing invasive plants is really challenging. For many of them, it's not as simple as just killing the above-ground material. In many cases, if you cut it and don't do anything more than that, it'll re-sprout from its roots and it starts all over again. Invasive plant management is really a long term investment over time.

We'll hear more about some of the virtues of invasive species in future programs. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.