I think scotch thistle was brought over here by the ornamental trade. I spend several days a year grubbing it out of the front 5 acres. I spent a lot of money getting rid of Quinoa akbea that was strangling a bunch of trees in some land that I shared with my sisters in Pennsylvania and we all lived far away. It was way into the canopies of trees and had a 3 acre spread and branches were breaking, trees dying. One thing to think about in comparing Europe to the US is the amount of wild land that isn't gardened and this land can be invaded. I live close to a 3000 acre park, and a couple 8000 acre ranches. No one is out their weeding. Invasives are a problem. They blow in from the suburbs. They get brought in in hay bales. That is how I got Johnson grass. Birds bring vine berries.Yellow star malta thistle has taken over 15 million acres in California and it causes horses to get a neurological condition that keeps them from swallowing so they chew and chew and die of starvation. IyT is in the cattle guard and on my list to poison. One can drive through States and states of Kudzo and then one enters the Mile a minute hanging forests of west virginia,virginia and Kentucky and then the Appalachians full of multiflora rose and Jappanese knotweed. It is sad to see the landscape in distress. I have an fragrant mimosa in my yard. It is a native and it Makes A LOT of seed but there's a bug that lives and bores into almost every seed and lays an egg or something in each one. I would not advise taking it to England without a good population of that bug. It is hard to pull out with a wicked deep root and spreads by its root too. It is in balance here, and I love its fragrance, but I can see that if that bug wasn't here, it would be a bugger. The thing about invasive lists is they are the plants that are already out of the gate. The ones that are just gathering steam have not been addressed. It gets so confusing because a plant van be a real problem in one place and not be a problem 20 miles away.Globalization with its ease of shipping plant material and the stepped up pace of plant introduction of these last decades is going to bite us in the @ss.

This is a timely topic. My husband and I are hoping to transform a weedy patch at the back of our new yard into a veggie garden. The area is shot through with horsetail. I've never fought this particular foe, but here's our plan--we'd appreciate any thoughts you all have to share... This spring, we scavenged cardboard from anyplace we could get it and laid out a layer or two of cardboard over the whole area, about 15 feet by 25 feet. The weeds were basically just trampled underneath, though we did spray some Roundup on the stray weeds poking out around the edges. (The horsetail did seem pretty responsive to the RU--no clue how far along the root system that went, though.) We then marked out where the beds and the paths would be. Where the paths are, we laid out a few inches of bark chips on top of the cardboard. Where the beds will be, we laid out black weedcloth, basically to hide the unsightly cardboard! Our intent is to leave the garden-to-be in this state until at least fall, maybe next spring. When we're ready to plant we'll layer several inches of Cedar Grove topsoil on the cardboard and plant directly in the topsoil. Hopefully by then all the weeds will have been smothered, and the cardboard will be weak enough that roots of our desired plants will be able to penetrate through. Seem like a reasonable plan? Anyone have any better suggestions? Much obliged! Angie Kantola

The Heracleum very likely IS actually from Mongolia or at least that region. Youd be amazed how many of the perennial "new introductions" come from all over the world. A lot come from China and other areas in Asia! There are people that travel all over just looking for possible new perennials to growand sellover here! Panayoti Kelaidis from DBG does itheres a link to his blog from his most recent trip, and Kelly Grummons from Timberline used to do it sometimes too. Dont know if he still does. Re: the "cow parsnip," I found this in the Encyclopedia Britannica: ".....the giant hogweed, is native to the Caucasus but is grown elsewhere as an ornamental." That reference is to a different species (H. maximum) that gets even BIGGER, and I found another species specifically linked to Mongolia, and I found this at another site: "Heracleum lehmannianum, originally from Tajikistan. A thumping furry thing with huge cut leaves and big plates of umbels. The seeds in particular have a weird slightly indian spicy but not quite pleasant scent." There are apparently at least 60 different species of Heracleumsome called hogweed. As near as I can tell, the lehmannianum is pretty unusual, and I wish I had an appropriate place to grow it. Theres another reference to the H.l. being from Tajikistan in the article Ive linked below. Its mentioned in the paragraph by the white flowers! Its all kind of interesting when you start to research it! Aint the web a great thing! :-) Skybird

DABT, as I have an interest in wild edible plants I have learned a few things. One important thing you can assume is ALL MUSHROOMS ARE POISONOUS. They are difficult to tell apart from the edible ones without a microscope. The other thing is, poisonous plants usually (but not always) taste bad, really bad, so if a kid starts to chew on one, he will soon spit it out. So, in the interest of keeping things simple so you can keep your kids safe, let me make some generalizations which will put you on the safe side of caution: - All white berries are poisonous. - Plants which are poisonous taste bitter. - Plants with white/milky sap are generally poisonous (except cow parsnip above, which has a clear sap) - All fungi and mushrooms are poisonous and some can kill with just one small taste. - Hemlock is poisonous (see Socrates) and looks just like wild carrot/Queen Anne's Lace. You can get a book on Edible Wild Plants. Mine shows me what similar but poisonous plants look like. So it shows me wild carrot, and shows me hemlock also, and tells me the differences, which are very subtle indeed. Many field guides to plants or wild flowers also tell you which ones are poisonous. Post the phone number to your poison control center on your fridge. Make sure it is in a handy place where kids can't pull it down and lose it. One thing I learned as a parent is kids eat all kinds of things, like coins, legos, small beads, gum, and apple seeds (which contain cyanide compounds), yet they have no ill effects for the most part. And they don't make "chink chink" sounds when they walk around from all the coins, they don't pass a whole spaceship in the toilet from all the lego pieces they ate, and an apple tree doesn't grow in their stomach. Be vigilent but don't make yourself crazy.