Effective Control of Purple Loosestrife
Introduction
Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria L.) is a perennial, herbaceous, wetland plant native to Europe and Asia. Although purple loosestrife arrived to North America unintentionally, most seeds arrived in the ballast of ships. Sailors often used dirt to stabilize their ships if they did not have enough cargo to settle their boat down into the water. In the early 1800’s when they arrived in the Americas from Europe, they would dump out their ballast into the harbor where the seeds quickly grew and spread. European settlers were part of the spread of purple loosestrife as well. These settlers traditionally used purple loosestrife as a home remedy fix often-using purple loosestrife for digestive problems,…show more content… Many settlers used purple loosestrife as a decorative plant during the summer months because of their purple flowers. It also became beneficial to beekeepers in the early 1900’s because bees were attracted to the purple flowers and so beekeepers began putting purple loosestrife flowers around their bee colonies to attract more bees to produce more honey. Due to reasons like these it helped the spread of purple loosestrife across North America. Now, because of concerns over its spread as an invasive species, it is listed as a noxious weed and banned from sale in over 34 states throughout the US. Purple loosestrife has been very detrimental to the wetlands throughout North America. According to Thompson (1989), “In many areas, purple loosestrife makes up more than 50% of the biomass of emergent vegetation.” The northeastern United States and southern Canada are the areas experiencing the greatest impact of purple loosestrife. These locations are thriving with purple loosestrife and have maintained themselves for over 20 years making them seem permanent. In these areas purple loosestrife were able to establish and spread quickly due to the lack of
