Managing purple loosestrife

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Radio interview source: Ted Elliman, vegetation management coordinator, New England Wild Flower Society

We ran a story in Living the Country Life magazine that had a photo of a woman's garden. She had purple loosestrife in it, and readers pointed out that it is a noxious plant. I mentioned this to my neighbor, Sharon, and she relayed her experience trying to get it out of her garden. She had planted it years ago, before it was a problem. It has incredibly deep roots, is fibrous and matted, and a bear to remove.

The signature characteristic of purple loosestrife is the showy spike of flowers it displays in mid- to late summer. It grows from 3 to 10 feet tall.

Ted Elliman is a vegetation management coordinator with the New England Wildflower Society and says it's a pretty plant, but what it does to natural wetlands isn't so nice. It grows like crazy and snuffs out native vegetation.

"People should be aware of the kind of impact it has, particularly when you think about a marsh and all the wildlife -- the birds, and mammals such as muskrat -- that depend on the natural system and the natural plant diversity of these place," Elliman says. "When you get a plant like loosestrife moving in there, you lose a lot of those wildlife values and it reduces the habitat."