back from just east of Toronto
Frederick W. Schueler
We're well back from our excursion to deepest Whitby now, and are even
well over the shock at the nativist appearance of our streams and towns,
where our newly accustomed eyes have been screaming out "Where's the
invasive aliens?" for the past few days.
Aleta has posted a painting of one native being enstrangled by aliens at
http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/2010/07/alien-infiltration-oil-on-canvas-5-x-7.html
We found that the streams draining into Lake Ontario are perplexingly
barren, even despite the number of Carp around, but the banks are
thronged by alien plants - leading to songs such as:
Dog-strangling Vine, Dog-strangling Vine,
Toronto thinks it is just fine
To see that everything's entwined
by thickets of Dog-strangling Vine.
We were stunned by the extent to which the Pink Jewelweed, Impatiens
glandulifera, Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), Bishops- or
Gout-weed (Aegopodium podagraria), the amazing Dog-strangling Vine,
Vincetoxicum, and Colts-foot (Tussalago farfara) have taken over the
valleys of streams that drain into Lake Ontario since 1994 when we did
the surveys for "A Place to Walk." The fields back from Wilmot Creek are
surrealistic with DS-V and Pink Jewelweed in a way that Salvador Dal�,
with his spartan style, couldn't possibly capture. Upper Lynde Creek is
lined with Aegopodium to an extent I've never seen before anywhere. This
is a species that's not supposed to spread by seeds, but I bet it's
doing that along Lynde Creek - southern Ontario, kiss yourself goodbye.
When there's anything in the water it's the European Potamogeton
crispus. Streams that "look like" they'd be packed with mussels and
snails around here are just barren flats of sand and gravel, and we
could only suppose that spring spates and thunderstorms (amplified by
storm sewer systems) keep them too churned up for anything to grow to
maturity. Looking for Unionids in the Lynde Creek Marsh, we found
nothing but Carp -- the one factor I'd left out of my
"refuge-from-Zebras" model of Lake Erie estuaries, though how one could
forget about Carp after the way they banged into our canoe on the trip
we took along the waterfront in 1994 is something I can't explain. Aleta
has put the lakeshore scene up at
http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/2010/07/lynde-creek-mouth.html
Also Fire Ants are painfully plentiful along the lakeshore, and a snail
that's very much like Succinea putris is ubiquitous - just amazingly
gratuitously everywhere - on plants, under boards, floating on drift,
and dying of sunstroke out on boardwalks; I've collected about half a
gallon of them to send to real malacologists for identification.
It was a relief to get out of the GTA and see a Succineid that looked
like Novisuccinea ovalis on the banks of the Salmon River at
Shannonville (where we also found the endangered mussel Vallonia iris,
(showing that this species extends down to the mouth of the river), no
Zebra Mussels, and one plant of Mirabilis nyctaginea, or Four-o'Clock,
which I've never recognized before.
fred.
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Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
Thirty Years Later Expedition -
http://fragileinheritance.org/projects/thirty/thirtyintro.htm
Longterm ecological monitoring - http://fragileinheritance.org/
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
http://www.doingnaturalhistory.com/
http://quietcuratorialtime.blogspot.com/
RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
(613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
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bev wigney
We found that the streams draining into Lake Ontario are perplexingly barren, even despite the number of Carp around, but the banks are thronged by alien plants - leading to songs such as:
Dog-strangling Vine, Dog-strangling Vine,
Toronto thinks it is just fine
To see that everything's entwined
by thickets of Dog-strangling Vine.
Attack of the giant hogweed? Hogwash
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/attack-of-the-giant-hogweed-hogwash/article1650225/
This paragraph in particular:
"In Ontario, callers are flooding the invasive species hotline run by the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and the Ministry of Natural Resources with questions. “We're getting at least 50 calls a day,” says Francine MacDonald, the OFAH's invading species program manager, in Peterborough. “We have three people staffing the lines full-time.”
Interesting how people could care less about the impact of invasive plants *until* they begin to panic over the possibility of being burnt by caustic juices. Then, all of a sudden, everyone is scrambling to stamp out these villainous plants. I see a promising future in this for the invasive species control industry. Just think -- a rising need for staff to field reports of alien species; agents assigned to the field to hunt down plants and remove them. A fleet of special vehicles will be needed to transport personnel and captive plants. Perhaps barrier walls can be constructed to keep the alien species from breaching the boundaries between wild areas and public parks and private residences. If things get bad enough, several blimps could be floated for aerial survey purposes. Maybe a few surveillance drones to safely patrol infested areas.
Of course, I'm just having a little fun with the sudden "concern" over alien plant species. Perhaps spending winter on the north side of the U.S.-Mexico border will do that to you after awhile.
In any case, if more invasive plants and creatures were capable of inflicting painful wounds on humans, I think it safe to assume that the situation would be taken much more seriously. As it is, most of this flora and fauna is seen as innocuous by the average person. Perhaps the brouhaha over Giant Hogweed is just what is needed to improve funding for monitoring and eradication programs.
bev
Frederick W. Schueler
> Interesting how people could care less about the impact of invasive
> plants *until* they begin to panic over the possibility of being burnt
> by caustic juices. Then, all of a sudden, everyone is scrambling to
> stamp out these villainous plants.
* we saw one stand of Giant Hogweed, in a park in Whitby.
> I see a promising future in this
> for the invasive species control industry. Just think -- a rising need
> for staff to field reports of alien species; agents assigned to the
> field to hunt down plants and remove them. A fleet of special vehicles
> will be needed to transport personnel and captive plants. Perhaps
> barrier walls can be constructed to keep the alien species from
> breaching the boundaries between wild areas and public parks and private
> residences. If things get bad enough, several blimps could be floated
> for aerial survey purposes. Maybe a few surveillance drones to safely
> patrol infested areas.
* the one thing you can be sure of, is that such a rising tide won't
provide employment for those who have been monitoring invasive species
of plants for the past few decades.
bev wigney
>>the one thing you can be sure of, is that such a rising tide won't provide employment for those who have been monitoring invasive species of plants for the past few decades.
be