Invasives in the Garden

The other day one of my students showed up to our Independent Study meeting with a unique bookmark:  a grass plant, long roots and all, that he had pulled from his vegetable garden. 

As Dan weeded his garden, this grass reminded him of the extraordinary length of the roots of native perennial prairie plants and how they hold the soil and reach deeper than many shallow-rooted non-native annual plants for scarce water resources.  Whether this grass plant was native or not didn’t matter for the moment; what did matter was that its tenacity and water-reaching habits could show his tender radishes a thing or two about survival.  It also made him think about which kinds of plants can survive prairie conditions unaided and which kinds need an assist.

I’ve been tending to my own non-native plants and know exactly which ones would be growing in my city yard should this property be abandoned for 100 years.  In particular, I think of “Bela Lugosi,” the deep wine-colored daylily of my mother’s that I brought from her garden to mine in Fargo. 

After she died, I dug up many of her flowers to make a living legacy in my own yard.  Some plants didn’t survive the first winter, but Bela Lugosi persists and, like the celluloid heroes that Ray Davies (my favorite Kink) admires, will “never really die.” 

Bela is not “liable to turn and bite,” but is here to stay quietly and bloom where planted.  So is the tough perennial grass that stowed away entwined in Bela’s fleshy tubers, cheerfully going from Michigan to North Dakota soil without missing a beat.  My mother called it “Johnson grass” (Sorghum halepense) and cursed its long runner roots.  Johnson grass is a Mediterranean import, first sowed by Colonel William Johnson on his Alabama plantation in 1840.  Thanks a bunch, Bill.

Every year I feel down through the healthy strapping leaves of the daylily and grub out the stubborn thin ropes of Johnson grass (is it really Johnson grass? Or was that my mother’s catch-all for any weedy grass?).  I hope that I pull with the right tension and at the right angle in order to yank out several inches of roots.  No matter how many times I repeat this process, the grass returns every year.

“Get rid of that daylily,” said the landscaper that was digging a new flowerbed with organic curves to beautify my backyard.  He regarded Bela and its clasping partner as miscreants that would forever wreak havoc.  He was aghast that I wanted him to divide Bela, clean the tubers, and ensconce the doublets in his masterwork.  When I promised that I would never blame him or his landscape design business for any blades of grass in the garden, he reluctantly cut the vampire in two and put the halves to sleep in the soft black dirt.

Sure enough, the grass returns every spring, wrapped tight around the Drac’s subterranean heart.  The pint-sized crimson-purple lily blooms shyly and profusely, and every year I remember how my mother and I would stroll through her garden in the evening, drinks in hand, as she said, “Now there’s ‘Miss Lindgard,’ and ‘Bright Eyes,’ and tiny ‘Bitsy’; ‘Alma Potschke’ will be just lovely in a few weeks – and look, ‘Bela Lugosi’ will bloom any day now.”  It always seemed appropriate that a seductive little vampire cozied up to a bevvy of beauties.

I doubt throwing Bela Lugosi away would have solved the grass problem.  It seems oddly fitting that the grass and the daylily run their course together.  Both are tough as old boots and built to take a beating.  Bela is a far cry, however, from Hemerocallis fulva (often referred to as Ditch lily or Outhouse lily) which is often seen along the sides of rural roads, but its roots are identical in that they hold soil in place and prevent erosion.  

Those bright drifts of the semi-wild orange lilies floating in seas of tall grasses often mark the sites of old homesteads that are long gone.   Back in the 1790s many settlers brought the now ubiquitous orange flower to adorn their gardens and provide a touch of domestication for their new homes in a strange land.

Neither Hemerocallis “Bela Lugosi” nor Sorghum halepense is a native plant, nor are they prairie plants.  Bela is a Johnny-come-lately, a mere babe hybridized in 1995.  Still, in fantasy it is interesting to ponder their individual fates should they both be abandoned on a lonely 19^th century farmstead.  We already know that Johnson grass would run roughshod, crowding native prairie plants, swarming over and under the land and into cultivated fields with its greedy, snaking, rhizomatous roots.  It is one of the most noxious weeds in the world. 

About Bela, we also know enough to say how he would perform.  He isn’t much of a vampire (unlike the Johnson grass), and he would never succeed the way that Hemerocallis fulva has.  Still, in true daylily fashion, he would put up a fight, his plump tuberous roots trying to make the most of scarce water.  His refined genes, however, would place him a far distant second to his common orange cousin, and he’d never achieve so grand a testament to his will to endure as “Outhouse Lily.”