Tansy.

And not native to North America.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tansy

Thanks for the ID. I spread a packet of wildflower mix out last fall and forgot about it. I wonder if the flowers came from that. I don't see them anywhere else on the property, come to think of it.

Yep, quite likely the source. And while not native, not a real problem-causer either, at least IMO. Some people go into a tizzy upon siting that which is not native, but for me, it's just the real damaging stuff. For example, in my area, Dame's Rocket-Hesperis-is common. Some folks, well-intended-believe we must eradicate this pretty mustard family plant. The question I always ask, whether to these folks, or just in my own head is, what difference does it make if Dame's Rocket grows in that spot, or more burdock or garlic mustard, which are the plants usually found nearby.

This native thing is hugely important, but IMO, it is equally important not to waste energy on unneeded pursuits. Tansy falls into this latter category-for me.

+oM

I wasn't going into a tizzy, but I felt like on a native plant forum it might be useful for people to know that it was not native.

Totally agree Esh...some people probably believe lilacs and rose of sharon are natives...after all they grow in the woods, right?
And no, I'm not being sarcastic...I'm serious.

I have a question along these lines. Are only non-native plants considered invasive? I was talking to an arborist about a shrub that was all over the place here. I asked him if it was invasive. He said nope, it's native. So native plants can't ever be invasive?

Also, does a flower have to be native to be considered a wildflower? Like the Tansy I posted. Is it not a wildflower then? Just wondering.

Oh not necessarily, you can certainly say Tall Ragweed (a prairie native) is very invasive and unwelcome ;0
Native plants belong where they grow...that's why they're native. Still, they can be a 'weed' (by definition) if growing where unwanted.

A wildflower technically means it can grow on it's own....that's all, but we usually mean a native wildflower.

By most accounts the term invasive was coined by Charles Elton in 1958 to describe ecologically invasive species. It refers to species that are non-native to an area that become naturalized and significantly alter the ecosystems they invade. As it is used in the field of ecology a native species would not be considered an invasive species. Even most non-native species would not be considered invasive. That is not to say that a plant native to Colorado can't be invasive in Michigan. There are also species that may only have a certain subspecies that is native and another subspecies that is invasive.

The term is used much more liberally among gardeners and landscapers to refer to any plant that establishes on its own to become more abundant than one would like (i.e. a weed). Often what an ecologist would call a ruderal species would be labelled as an invasive. These are plants that thrive in areas that have been disturbed.

Wildflower is a generic term. If it is growing wild and produces a flower one would notice at a glance it would be considered a wildflower.

I like to use the term "agressive" when refering to natives that, in a small garden plot, spread too much. Many of these in the wild are kept in bounds by factors such as poor soil, predation, etc. Obedient plant and tall goldenrod come to mind as plants to avoid in good soil in small spaces.

Invade means " to enter for conquest...to spread injuriously"', such as taking over an area, not allowing other things to grow.

Many states have published lists of non-natives to avoid. In NC we divide the list into levels, so you have a shorter list of the really "bad" aliens.

Unfortunately, it sometimes takes years of observation for us to realize what NOT to plant!

No intent whatsoever on my part Esh....to accuse you or anyone else in this thread of anything. I had to re-read your posts and mine to see if somehow it seemed my comments regarding the word 'tizzy' were somehow construed to be pointed at you. I don't see it.

In another sense, some of us use the word 'invade' to describe a perfectly natural and necessary process, ie. 'The white birch saplings were invading the old abandoned field' or that sort of thing. In other words, a benevolent process. As such, I guess this would be a non-injurious use of the word.

I remember watching a clip of a guy in SW Wisconsin who was quite smitten with his prairie planting. He was yanking out volunteer white pines and calling them "invasive junk". I believe this is exactly what is wrong with all this prairie bible stuff-it would hold that nature is a static thing, that once some version of "perfection" is reached, it needs to be shrink-wrapped and preserved for all time. Even though I love prairie plantings and am closely involved in their installation and maintenance, I really do hate the attitude I saw in action there.

+oM

I love prairie plantings...as such I had to burn and such to control tree invasion.

Prairie is an unnatural state of being for much of the US...the trees would have overgrown and choked it..if not for lightning fires, and possibly native American husbandry.

Prairie is also much more wildlife friendly and easy hunting, thus the reasoning behind natives promoting prairie habitat.

That given, prairie plants are still natives ;)

Exactly, dbarron...in the upper midwest, it was occasional lightening, and frequent anthropogenic activity, that accounted for the vast swaths of prairie in say, Illinois. All of the factors and attributes you just described were thought to have been the goal in all this burning of the landscape. So....not "natural", unless you consider human activity to be part of nature. I pretty much do, so where such was taking place, I accept it as the "natural" order of things. And this does really apply well in the plains, less and less as one moves north and east.

I've seen low-resolution maps of where prairie occurred in the US prior to European settlement. In these maps, Wisconsin was excluded entirely. I also have the original land surveyor's map in my office, and it does show blips and bleeps of prairie in this state. Yet to hear some tell it, we were just like Kansas up here! I wonder, did these folks never here of Paul Bunyan?

+oM

I would question the source of any map that excludes prairies from WI. Curtis' Vegetation of Wisconsin went into some detail regarding the extent of prairies in southern WI prior to European settlement. He included some of the first accounts by settlers describing them as covering several miles. He estimated about 6% of the overall land area of the state (about 2 million acres) was prairie. Over twice that area was oak openings, and both mostly confined to the southwestern 3rd of the state. Fire probably wasn't the only factor that helped maintain these grasslands, as grazing by buffalo and elk probably played a role as well.

My point was low-resolution maps-not highly detailed-skipped the state entirely. That was not meant as a doctorly dissertation a la Curtis et al, but an indication that we here were never really one of the big states for that plant community. I made it clear that the maps prepared from the voluminous notes taken by the original land surveyors did indeed show small-as a relative term, please-areas of this vegetation type. I don't know how you managed to misconstrue-I pretty much just repeated myself. I do agree that the former existence of large herbivores played a role. And as far as that fire was concerned, it was largely anthropogenic.

This state was a battleground between Algonquin tribes like the Menominee and others, and the plains tribes to the south, which is itself a gross simplification of the truth, suitable for this hobbyist's board.

+oM

As you say, this is a hobbist's board. All the more reason to be clear about what the historical extent of these plant communities was. For those living in Wisconsin south of the so called tension zone, prairies were a significant component of the southern forest/oak opening/prairie mosaic. They are also much more rare now due to land conversion to agriculture, especially the prairies. Some of the nicest remnants I've visited were in the southeast corner of the state not far from the lake. It's a shame they have been reduced to such small patches relative to what they formerly were. I guess I don't understand why you would fault someone for trying to restore some of that ecosystem given how little of it remains in the state, unless you are talking about someone living in Green Bay.

I guess you'd have to be in my shoes to see the damage-yes, damage-done by this obsession with prairies as "the" native vegetation, all while forests continue to be converted to parking lots and car washes ad nauseum. It's well beyond the time I've got right now-I'm smack in the middle of doing data gathering for Wetland Mitigation Monitoring Reports for our DNR and the Army Corps of Engineers-in sites which are prairie plantings no less, to fully flesh this out. I've taken shots at it here and there on the various native-oriented forums here on GW. We're talking highly nuanced, but most people just want to receive a very simple message that if they cut down the blue spruce and plant some Rudbeckias in their yards, they've done great things for nature.

I dare say, I think you'd be surprised if you knew the full extent of my personal and professional involvement in this area. And BTW, as vegetation manager for our many Stormwater utility sites and projects, I am directly involved in the installation and maintenance of prairie plantings.....not restorations...but which I do in fact view as little oases of habitat for those organisms which do best there. However, due to our location right in the middle of said tension zone, I've devoted considerable effort to educating my associates as to just exactly what vegetation communities are truly native here. We've therefore expanded the total plant palette we use at such sites. You'd be extremely hard-pressed to convince me this has not been an important and positive contribution.

What has happened, again due to what I call the prairie lobby, is that because the basic methodology of prairie formation/maintenance is that these were pyric plant communities, now everyone thinks all the land around here burned every three years, or some equivalent bit of nonsense. In fact, the county I live in was originally covered by primarily northern hardwood forest, which indeed does burn sometimes, but research has shown the fire interval to be roughly 400 years! I decry the simple-minded way that so many avowed native enthusiasts view plant community management, due to the unwarranted intrusion of this kind of thinking into every corner of the discipline. Pyric plant communities are great, they did exist in this state, but they are far, far from the whole story. And this unwarranted simplification does a disservice to nature at large. I've literally been standing in the middle of one of our created prairies with one of the big guys, the acknowledged experts, in the field of native restoration, as they wondered if this strain of big bluestem, or that patch of switchgrass, was genetically appropriate for our locale,while during the whole time, an adjacent tract of forest was being torn down for more houses....with not a word or so much as a thought given to the utterly wanton destruction going on next door, so to speak. This rubs me the wrong way, to say the very least.

+oM

I would agree that installing prairies in areas where they wouldn't naturally occur is not a good use of resources. Now that I know where you are working in the state I have a better understanding of where you are coming from. The only restorations I've seen were in southern WI and northeastern IL on old farmland that was likely prairie or something close to that originally. I will say that the people that I worked with in that region were well versed in the plant communities that naturally occur there. As I recall they had a pretty good understanding of the natural fire regimes and how they were influenced by topography and riparian areas.

Tansy is a very very invasive plant in parts of coastal Rhode Island. Haven't seen it be problematic anywhere else though.

Tanacetum vulgare/Tansy spreads rapidly here: I started out with 2 plants put by the kitchen door to help keep ants out and now (15+ years later) it's all over the farm....yellow buttons EVERYWHERE.

The original posting had to do with what was Tansy. It is horribly invasive here in the N. Central US.
Here is a posting describing the out of control nature of this beast.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Bad Tansy

When I think of a serious invasive plant problem, it goes beyond the fact the species in question is or has proliferated in a given area. For it to make it to my list of concern, it has to be actively displacing good stuff. Where I see tansy growing, it is in a sea of reed canary grass or other non-native plant and plant community. Reminds me of the frenzy some get in to over Dame's Rocket, which in every case where I see that plant, it is merely taking up space which would otherwise be occupied by burdock, thistles, garlic mustard...etc. Thee's degrees of invasiveness and at least in my part of the world, tansy isn't even second-tier.

For one penny to be spent on its (tansy's) eradication, when we've got wholesale destruction of our woodlands via buckthorn/garlic mustard, is a travesty of poor judgement, IMO.

+oM

In NC we have levels of invasiveness on the official list, so at least we can see the major problems for our areas. No one can try to eradicate all the "bad" ones. Here Japanese stilt grass is awful, and now I am seeing a fairly new invader, Youngia japonica...worse than garlic mustard in my area. Choose your battles, I say.

Exactly, nc. It's not that I like to see tansy all over the place-alright, I kind of do, lol-but that there are far more pressing concerns. There are such lists here as well. In fact, the number-one invasive plant in Wisconsin is....drum roll.....reed canary grass. Not too surprising when you see it having invaded near-every degraded wetland. That's a lot of acreage. And I am involved in battling that species often, albeit with no expectation that it will ever be vanquished from the state. And in truth, I get the most heartburn over the shade-tolerant crap, like the buckthorn and garlic mustard, their having the ability to pretty much ruin woodlands. That's what hurts the most, IMO.

+oM

Tom, wouldn't the type of soil be a clue to whether a particular piece of land was covered by prairie or by forest? I've wondered about this for my own property, since I don't live far from the Missouri River. I've noticed on the local soil surveys that more upland sites tend to have soils classified as mollisols, and the lower, typically forested areas as alfisols.

Or have I got it backwards? Was the distinction between mollisol and alfisol based on what the soil surveyors assumed was the native vegetation?

Woods Tea, I get my "sols" confused, but I can address your question more generally. Where prairie did in fact exist-at time of European settlement-the very deepest, richest soils were often found. Despite prairie having lesser overall height than say, forest, shrub-carr, or other taller plant community, those prairie plants had amazingly well-developed root systems. As these matrices grew and died over the course of millennia, an enormous amount of good soil was produced. Hence, the richest farmed soils in the world are right in the center of the US, in the former prairie belt.

Beyond that, we must factor in not just genotypes, but phenotypes....what happened in that spot, when, and how often. Alright, I'm somewhat butchering the actual meaning of those two terms, but I hope it illustrates my points. If native Americans burned and burned an area, it would not be able to develop into forest no matter how much that is what would have otherwise happened....things like that. Or wind storms, etc. Lots of disturbances out there which can set back a plant community. Even deep in the forest-in heavily forested areas-one can find meadows, where some happenstance led to a removal of the tree canopy. It's probably best to consider such meadows as a "seral stage", ie. one in a series of plant communities which will occupy that site. Sometimes, I think we humans forget how dynamic nature is, and perhaps want to freeze things in time. At least, that's how I see much of the enthusiasm for prairies in S. Wisconsin. There, Indians were the creators of these grassland/forb communities, not "nature", although it is certainly acceptable to consider their activities as a part of nature.

+oM