New Study Shows Invasive Plants Are Often Sold as Ornamentals
Cogongrass, a federally listed invasive plant, can still be found for sale in many nurseries.
A recent study by ecologists at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst shows that many nurseries, garden centers, and online retailers are still offering hundreds of invasive plant species as ornamental garden plants. This includes 20 species that are illegal to grow or sell nationwide.
The study, “Invaders for sale: the ongoing spread of invasive species by the plant trade industry,” published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, shows that existing regulatory and ethical guidelines do not serve to limit the widespread introduction of invasive plants, and that more than 60% of the 1,285 plants identified as invasive remain for sale.
“Once we’ve recognized that an ornamental plant can be invasive, we would hope that commercial sales of that species would stop,” says Evelyn M. Beaury, a graduate student in organismic and evolutionary biology at UMass and lead author of the study. “But our findings show that our current framework for removing invasive plants from plant trade isn’t working. States are generally doing a good job limiting sales of their own regulated plants, but we found major inconsistencies in what’s being regulated across state borders. Nearly all states had at least one of their regulated plants sold in a neighboring state.”
“We’ve known for decades that many gardening and landscaping plants are invasive,” adds Bethany Bradley, senior author and professor of environmental conservation at UMass, “but we’ve done little to stop propagating them. We can do better.”
To learn more about how the study was conducted, and what can be done about the situation, continue reading here.
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