Doug Kanter wrote:
"Travis" wrote in message
news:A741e.10406$uw6.7897@trnddc06...
Doug Kanter wrote:
"Travis" wrote in message
news:TG%0e.9520$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.

We don't have what you would call humid weather.

I was just guessing, since (in theory), people from Seattle are
supposedly accustomed to living with lots of rain.

Having lots of rain is in my mind different than having humid summers
like in the midwest, East and the Southeast. It is raining today and
the humidity is 93% but the temperature is only 39 degrees so it doesn't
feel humid/muggy even though it factually is humid.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8b
Sunset Zone 5