Rosemary brings us a fairy tale about an evil invasive flower and the heroic bug that has been sent to NH to control it.
Something Wild: Purple Loosestrife Update
Air date: September 26, 2003
Welcome to this week’s edition of Something Wild.
I’m Rosemary Conroy for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
Once upon a time, a tall, purple plant began to appear all across the land. At first, people marveled at its beauty, and how well it went with the goldenrods that also lit up the late summer landscape.
But the purple plant began to spread and spread. Nothing could stop it. It began rudely pushing out native plants like cattails, which liked to live in the same marshy places it did. The wicked newcomer, which came to be known as purple loosestrife, offered no food or shelter to the birds, frogs and fishes that lived in the wet places. They began to suffer too.
The rulers of the land declared that no one could sell or grow the pesky plant. But it continued to spread. Some people just could not believe that something so beautiful could be so evil.
Then wizards from across the sea discovered a tiny beetle that liked to eat purple loosestrife. They performed incantations make sure the beetle wasn’t cursed with bad habits like spreading uncontrollably or eating things it wasn’t supposed to. But the beetle (which wasn’t much to look at, by the way) always behaved like a prince.
So the brave little beetle was sent out across the land to take on the wicked invasive plant. Soon the good people of New Hampshire heard tales of these tiny white knights. They took the beetles to certain purple loosestrife-plagued places and released them. And lo and behold! The beetles ate the plant all up. And the people began to have hope that this dragon of a plant could be slain.
Will they live happily ever after? Alas, the story is still unfolding. But wishes sometimes do come true, especially when the king that rules the land continue to fund them.
Something Wild is a join production of the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, NHPR, and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
For Something Wild, I’m Rosemary Conroy.
