Sentences with word «loosestrife»

It may be your sphere isn't concerned about the proliferation of purple loosestrife in waterways.

A few observers, writing in obscure journals, have reported seeing the moth Biston betularia on purple loosestrife in Manitoba.

Yet a large stand of loosestrife in summer, with thousands of vivid purple plumes piercing the horizon, is a sight worthy of strong poetry.

For instance, he notices Virginia creeper climbing on the dead loosestrife stalks, which remain standing for two years.

Everything from muskrats to bog turtles attracts his attention, and he had accumulated notebooks of observations on loosestrife before most people had ever heard of it.

Charles Darwin, perhaps the founding member of the purple loosestrife fan club, wrote botanist Asa Gray, «I am almost stark, staring mad over Lythrum... For the love of heaven, have a look at some of your species and if you can get me some seed, do!»

A review of the history of purple loosestrife by zoologists Heather Hager and Karen McCoy, formerly at the University of Guelph in Ontario, concluded that despite belief to the contrary, there is little or no evidence to suggest that the incursion of the plant has serious ecological consequences.

«The direct scientific rationale used to advocate purple loosestrife control does not exist,» they write, adding that «aesthetic reasons remain the justification for its control.»

Loosestrife reproduction relies on a rare phenomenon Darwin called heterostyled trimorphism, the existence of three different flower types, each containing a sexual apparatus «as distinct from one another as if they belonged to different species.»

«We found that the evolution of local adaptation to climate in purple loosestrife increased reproduction as much as or more than escaping natural enemies.

It may be that in a predator - free environment loosestrife is like a country no longer at war that can reduce defense spending and invest in infrastructure.

«I've been coming here for 25 years,» he says, piloting his dilapidated Toyota over back roads leading to the pond, «and there's not a lot more loosestrife now than there was then.

Yet not even the most enthusiastic biocontrol freaks, as Kiviat sometimes calls them, think insects are the whole answer to loosestrife management: Hand removal and other methods will always be necessary.

«A big plant like loosestrife, which takes two years to die back, might provide important shelter for something.»

(One test: The insects starved to death when offered anything but loosestrife to eat.)

In his writing, he's less restrained, sprinkling his work with literary allusions to loosestrife from Hamlet and Wind in the Willows to remind readers that in other places and times it wasn't a public enemy.

But Kiviat, sounding slightly aggrieved, says that New Jersey loosestrife is visited by «big, beautiful, important butterflies — monarchs and tiger swallowtails and silver - spotted skippers.»

As naturalist John Burroughs wrote: «Your eye... will revel with delight in the masses of fresh bright color afforded by the purple loosestrife which... shows here and there like purple bonfires.»

Take the butterfly: The standard guide to butterflies of New Jersey says that only cabbage butterflies, the lepidopteran equivalent of trash fish, use loosestrife.

Even if biocontrol were to eliminate loosestrife, there are plenty of other invasives to which Kiviat could turn his attention.

Although he couldn't have known it at the time, loosestrife encircled the pond so rapidly because it thrives on disturbance.

In fact, the places where loosestrife has expanded are the places where humans have encroached on Thompson Pond.

The real object of his three - mile walk around the pond is to counter the notion that loosestrife creates a dead zone where no native plant can survive and no native animal sets foot.

To date, the group has released more than 3 million insects on more than 1,200 loosestrife sites in more than 30 states.

All of which has made life a lot more complicated for Erik Kiviat, an associate professor of environmental studies at Bard College in Annandale - on - Hudson, New York, who has been studying loosestrife for nearly a quarter of a century.

And a perfect place for Kiviat to show a visitor how loosestrife behaves in an undisturbed setting.

Same with loosestrife — it just is.

Minnesota researchers studying a wetland seed bank were recently disheartened to find that loosestrife seeds outnumbered other seeds ten to one.

Loosestrife seems to have hit the evolutionary jackpot.

These were maintained in the lab in an incubator at 18 °C and 60 % relative humidity with a 14 h: 10 h light: dark cycle, and fed waterlily or loosestrife leaves collected at the capture site.

Monographs include Anthony Hernandez (SFMOMA); Waiting, Sitting, Fishing and Some Automobiles (Loosestrife Editions); Everything (Nazraeli Press); Pictures for Rome (Smart Art Press); Sons of Adam: Landscapes for the Homeless II (Musee de L'Elysee and Centre National de la Photographie); Landscapes for the Homeless (Sprengel Museum); and Anthony Hernandez (Vancouver Art Museum).

One wildlife manager suggests the only effective way to get rid of loosestrife is to take a blowtorch to its roots.

Since 1985, researchers centered at Cornell have been studying the possibility of controlling loosestrife by importing some of its European predators.

He was interested enough to have grown specimens of loosestrife in his garden, and to have spent much of the summers of 1862 and 1863 snipping stamens, «castrating» the plants to use his unsettling terminology, and meticulously hand - fertilizing them with camel - hair brushes.

Purple loosestrife in full bloom at the experimental plots at the University of Toronto's Koffler Scientific Reserve.

Purple loosestrife has become an invasive species since its introduction into temperate New Zealand and North America where it is now considered a noxious weed.

Purple loosestrife is a semi-aquatic herbaceous plant belonging to the loosestrife family, Lythraceae, native to the wetlands of Eurasia.

Lythrum salicaria: Purple loosestrife, a wetland plant imported from Europe in the 1800s, is viewed by some as an ecological troublemaker and by others as a thing of beauty.

Purple loosestrife, that showy Eurasian flower you may have seen advancing along roadsides?

Even if the invaders themselves don't seem all that scary — gray squirrels, zebra mussels, and purple loosestrife are a far cry from gun - toting extraterrestrials — the threat they pose certainly does.

According to new research published in Science by University of British Columbia evolutionary ecologist Rob Colautti, rapid evolution has helped purple loosestrife to invade, and thrive in, northern Ontario.

But plants such as purple loosestrife; invertebrates like the zebra mussels and gypsy moths; mammals, including rats, feral cats and pigs; and microbes like the AIDS virus are hardly so benign.

Purple loosestrife — a European native popular as an ornamental plant in the early 1800s — has invaded wetlands in 48 states at an estimated cost of $ 45 million a year for control and loss of forage crops.

If plants were people, purple loosestrife would be Xena, warrior princess.

Within a few years the loosestrife, which had been only one element of the diverse flora, surrounded the new swimming hole with a purple palisade.

Kiviat insists he's not an apologist for the aggressive habits of loosestrife or other invasive plants.

Yet because of his unpopular position that Lythrum may not be so terrible, his bemused colleagues call him, only half in fun, «the friend of purple loosestrife.»

«Look, if you see a single purple loosestrife in a conservation area, I think you should pull it out by the roots and go back every year until it's gone.

«I'd say that's three - fourths on the swamp rose and one - fourth on the loosestrife,» he says, scrupulously refusing to overestimate its importance.