A national gardening magazine recently ran a series of essays titled “Plants I Wished I Had Never Planted.” Gardeners from around the country sounded off on plants behaving badly, the general theme – Wandering Ways. These are plants that spread more quickly than we would wish, by rhizomes (roots), by stolons (stems) or by seed.
A couple of things stand out. The first is regional nuances. Many of these are less likely to act up in Colorado gardens. While “Moudry” fountain grass may spread like a house afire in Pennsylvania, mine have never produced a single seedling. Likewise, “Oriental Limelight” artemisia has a bad reputation in other regions, but in my garden this thug is a pussycat.
One of the contributors, gardener Tom Peace, who lives only 10 miles from me, reports experiences vastly different from my own, illustrating the effect even slight variations in soil, orientation and precipitation patterns have on a plant’s success or failure.
For him the reseeding annual, golden tickseed Bidens ferulifolia, is a real pest. Mine have never made it past the transplant stage. “Valerie Finnis” artemisia is a problem in his garden where it mugs other plants. I no longer have mine. It escaped through the fence into the adjoining field to get away from my heavily mulched shade garden. I do share Tom’s love/hate relationship with red orach, Queen Anne’s lace and red pincushion flower Knautia macedonica.
I was thinking about these essays the other day as I tackled my work area on the side of the house. Every plant mentioned is a wuss compared to my golden hops vine. This monster had gone on a rampage, taking over a raised vegetable garden and enveloping a cold frame, inside and out. It was threatening to consume a neighbor’s shed and heading into my front yard 20 feet from its home base home. I decided to intervene.
The thing that distinguishes the hops vine from all other invasive plants is not its rate of growth (I swear you can actually see it grow), but its ability to fight back. And it fights dirty. Every time I walk past the hops vine to the compost bin, a tendril, well-armed with prickles, reaches out and grabs my arm, leaving nasty welts that look as if I have been whipped with a cat-o’-nine-
tails. Gloves, long sleeves and long pants are not protection enough.
Why do I harbor not only one, but two, of these fiends? It’s my husband, who doesn’t get excited about many plants in the garden, but adores the hops vine. They have pretty chartreuse leaves and attractive seedpods (the hops), but I suspect what he really cherishes is that this plant smells like beer. Because it doesn’t seem fair to eliminate one of the few plants that catch his fancy, the hops vines get to stay. Besides I’m frightened to think what they might be capable of doing to me if they caught wind of imminent eviction.
Marcia Tatroe is a garden writer and lecturer. E-mail her at rltaurora@aol.com.
