"Travis" wrote in message
news:TG%0e.9520$uw6.974@trnddc06...
Warren wrote:
John Thomas wrote:
I realize they're pretty plants and are a blast to have around if
you like watching insects, but given it's vigor, flowering rates,
overall hardiness and other traits, why doesn't buddleia strike
people as a potentially dangerous plant?

Why in god's name would anyone dump something like this into the
environment? (If this was GMO corn, people would be burning down
fabric mills in anger. :-)
http://www.usna.usda.gov/Gardens/invasives.html


Butterfly bush is not invasive. As the first sentence in the link
you provided states, "An invasive plant has the ability to thrive
and spread aggressively outside its natural range." That means you
plant one or two, and eventually you get dozens spreading from the
originally intended spot. Butterfly bushes don't do that.

Butterfly bush is a very aggressive grower. A single plant can go
from not much more than a stick with a couple of leaves to a bush
big enough to hide a small shack in just a few months. But you
won't have a dozen new butterfly bushes. It's a very aggressive grower,
but it's not the least bit invasive.

You want to get rid of it? Just dig up the one plant, and you're
done with it. It doesn't send out runners. It doesn't reseed. It
won't come back from that little bit of root you missed.

It reseeds like crazy in my neck of the woods.

Some plants are unbelievably picky about the environment they're grown in,
in order to REALLY hit their stride. Take rosemary as an example. Looks like
it's tough as nails when it's growing happily. But, bring it indoors for the
winter (and I mean REAL winter, as in Maine straight west to Montana), and
rosemary sulks or drops dead. Look at the same plant in its native
environment and it's unstoppable. Perhaps buddleia likes the humidity in
Washington, and even if the temps were identical all year to those in, say,
upstate NY, it would still want that humidity. Or something.