While I might nitpick with your choice of poison ivy as swing species in this example-it is after all used by a number of native lepidopterous species-I do fancy your (and my own) use of the concept of context! What a concept it is! So, let's say you have a relative rarity, an intact old-growth plant community of some type. That's rare and it is valuable, for reasons which I should not have to enumerate here. So let's further say that Dame's rocket-Hesperis matronalis-is creeping in at the edge. Should the dame's rocket be eliminated? In my view, yes, in this context, it and pretty much all non-native species should be kept at bay. Now let's pivot to some hellish-if not outright hell strip-patch of box elders, common buckthorn, and oh....burdock and Canada thistle growing alongside a hill in some "waste place" in one of our cities. And there's dame's rocket growing happily amongst all the other garbage. Is it a problem within that context? I say of course not. Yet there are native plant purists who would argue-and use scarce resources-to do just that-eliminate this pretty flowering mustard relative, I guess in order to free up some more space for the burdock. So context and nuance rules here. Trouble is, lots of folks don't do nuance. It's all one way or all the other-no inbetweens. That's a recipe for much wasted effort.......or an unseemly lack of effort where some would have done much good. Then there are those weirdos like myself-having long considered this issue, and from a variety of viewpoints, who believe a careful addition of certain non-native plant species is not only not harmful, but something that should be pursued with vigor. I think of the demise of eastern hemlock and the possibilities offered by the existence of very similar plants from China as one such example. Then there are those long-known species which, despite having been "here"-N. America for this example-for quite some time, have yet to break out and cause anything like an actual problem. Of course, astute readers will know I am now talking about Norway spruce, a plant which exceeds in many important qualities any roughly similar plant native to these shores. I view the addition of this plant to the landscape as not only not a problem, but as an enhancement of what is already here. Like I said, weirdo.

I don't consider them invasive here in Raleigh but I think they can be in zone 8 or further south (zone 8 would include our southern coastline). Most of the hardy forms are Lantana camara, but not all Lantana camara are hardy. Not every form of lantana has been completely hardy this far north (new ones show up every year). Of the ones that have been reliably hardy, most of them are of the genus Lantana and the species camara. Some of the low growing ground cover types have been hardy in my yard but they are a different species. 'Miss Huff' has been the standard of winter hardy lantanas. My only complaints about it is that it gets mighty big and can take a long time to green up in the spring (more like early summer). Every once in a while we will have a super cold winter that will kill off a bunch of "hardy" perennials. On those years you'll probably have to replace your lantanas.

Yes, I believe you can root a cutting of Lantana. At least with L. montivedensis. I tried during the spring when mine was putting out lots of new growth. As more an experiment than anything, I put 4 cuttings in water and watched them. Three dried out and died in about a week. The fourth put out roots, but didn't transplant well into soil. Having said that, I am extremely new to gardening and there was probably a ton of 'user error' on my part. I did not use rooting hormones on my cuttings but simply put them straight into the water. I also did not have my rain buckets at that time and so was using water from the tap, which for where I am, is very heavy with calcium. There were probably a number of other things I did wrong that I am not even aware of. But the partial success of that fourth cutting makes me fairly confident that it can be done successfully and I will be giving it another shot the next time I see new growth coming from my planted ones.

That's very interesting. So, Marti, your verifiable New Gold is doing what mine is doing? Yes, the reason that this sterile cultivar of Lantana was developed was that Lantana seeds were eaten by birds and spread EVERYWHERE. Hence invasive. You start with one Lantana, and you end up with lots all over the place. I didn't want that. Now, there are indeed other Lantanas around. Maybe the closest is about ten or fifteen yards away. So maybe ...? Really, I'm seeing a lot more seed pods from these cuttings than I did from the original clump of Lantana that they came from. In various online descriptions of "New Gold", they say it produces no seeds, which I'm now kind of skeptical about. A TAMU ag writeup says "New Gold -- bright yellow, sterile flowers, spreading habit. This new variety named New Gold blooms profusely but NEVER forms berries which have to be removed before more blooms will be produced." Um, maybe that means it forms berries, but not ones that need to be removed?? The Texas Superstar web page (yes, New Gold is a superstar) says "A new variety named 'New Gold' blooms profusely but seldom forms berries which have to be removed before more bloom will be produced" Ah, so now it's "seldom".