ALBANY, NY - Pretty purple flower. Pretty ugly behavior.
Purple loosestrife is blooming across the nation this month - and blooming, and blooming. As destructive as it is attractive, the shoulder-high weed with the distinctive vivid flower has frustrated wildlife workers for years.
Pulling, chopping, burning, flooding and poisoning haven't managed to control the plant. So government wildlife officials are trying another approach: bugs.
Loosestrife is a relentless invader, covering an estimated 100,000 acres nationwide and crowding out other wetland plants and animals. It is prolific in areas as small as roadside ditches and as large as the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in central New York.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has dubbed it "Public Enemy No. 1" on federal lands. It is estimated that $45 million is lost each year on control efforts and damaged forage.
And the Nature Conservancy, a private environmental group, has listed the plant among its 12 least wanted "alien species," putting it in company with zebra mussels and brown snakes.
As part of the government's counter offensive, five species of loosestrife-eating beetles have been introduced in selected areas around the nation over the past four years. The species separately concentrate on leaf-eating, flowerchomping and root-boring - a hit-' em-high, hit-' em-low approach that appears to be working so far.
The beetles' diet consists only of purple loosestrife, so scientists hope to solve the problem without messy side effects.
"It is the perfect solution, if it works," said Bernard Blossey, a big-control specialist with Cornell University.
The beetles, like the plant they eat, come from Europe. But while the beetles' trans-Atlantic crossing was planned, loosestrife seeds often made accidental journeys.
The seeds are believed to have made it to the United States in the 1800s via ship ballast's dumped into New York Harbor and in imported wool. It also was brought over as a medicinal herb, used for diarrhea and other ailments.
Loosestrife sprouted around the Northeast, where it was sometimes dubbed "rebel weed" in the Civil War era, on the mistaken assumption it was brought north by soldiers.
Helped along by inland waterways, loosestrife spread to ponds, marshes, river banks, even irrigation ditches out West. It is now thought to sprout in most, if not all, of the 50 states.
It was an easy invasion. Loosestrife left its natural predators back in Europe, and the plant can produce millions of seeds per plant.
Purple loosestrife can sprout about a centimeter a day - "You can watch it grow," said David Adams, a fish and wildlife technician for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, based in New Paltz.
Standing as high as seven feet, purple loosestrife grows in such thick tangles that other native plants get choked out. That, in turn, affects the animals that depend on those native plants for food or cover.
The plant has some fans. Beekeepers like it because its many flowers help pollination. Some gardeners favor it because the late bloomer adds luster to plots after most other flowers have wilted. Some nurseries even sell it.
Nonetheless, loosestrife is on environmentalists' hit lists.
"Why don't we like purple loosestrife? Because basically it degrades wetland big-diversity," Adams said.
The beetles dispatched to handle the plant will need time to do the work, reproduce and head out to other plants, Blossey said. So it could be another 10 years before a nationwide reduction is noticed. Over a couple of decades, researchers predict the purple loosestrife population will be reduced by 90 percent.
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