We’ve established that plants are good. Plants are what convert the energy of the sun into something useable for all other forms of life. But all plants aren’t created equal, in the place and time that you are.
Native plants are actually the only truly useful plants. Why? Because plants try to protect themselves from being eaten, so they create these crazy cocktails of chemicals that make them inedible or at least inpalatable to many forms of life. However, each plant has SOME other things that have evolved to get nutrition from it. This symbiosis is the key to ecosystems, but it doesn’t happen easily. It can take thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years for evolution to catch up and allow fauna and fungi to eat a new plant.
Invasive plants are bad because they can’t be eaten by the things that already live where they’re growing. And they won’t be edible, in human lives, forever.
For example, to the right is an image of Japanese Knotweed that was growing on the Manhan Rail Trail.
This plant was brought into local ecosystems as an ornamental plant, but has a talent for spreading and growing in a variety of habitats. It has vast roots and dense stands that quickly crowd out native plants from their natural growth.
As a result, the fauna and the fungi that might have relied on the plants that would have grown there, are left instead with dense plants that are useless to them.
