Easy-growing plants: good news, bad news
By Kay Wilson Tribune-Herald staff writer
Beware the plant that grows too easily in scorching heat or extended cold spells. Some plants that do well in Central Texas with little water and care can become trouble in the backyard garden when fertilized and nurtured.
While beautiful and easy to grow, the more invasive plants may encroach into areas of less adapted plants or even spread uncontrollably to your lawn.
There is a fine line and no expert delineation between aggressive and invasive. The Texas Department of Agriculture keeps the only official list of invasive plants for the state.
Bamboo grows along a road near Cameron Park.
Rod Aydelotte/Tribune-Herald
Doug Welsh, assistant head of the horticulture department at Texas A&M University, said agencies are “more likely to use the terms naturalized or widely adapted than aggressive or invasive.”
Among plants that fall into the aggressive category are Turk’s cap, bamboo, ligustrum, ruella, Chinese pistache, Chinese tallow, chinaberry trees and honeysuckle. But of those, Chinese tallow is the only ornamental, or decorative, plant to appear on the Texas Department of Agriculture’s invasive list.
Welsh differentiated between aggressive and invasive with the example of crepe myrtle and Chinese tallow, both of which are naturalized.
“(Although) I get seedlings of crepe myrtle that come up in my garden,” he said, “Chinese tallow would produce thousands of seedlings in my yard that would take over.”
Welsh, participating at a Waco workshop last week, said the topic of invasive plants “has become a hot button issue that I believe Texas A&M horticulturists will be addressing in the near future.”
“It is left to John Doe, the local gardener, to interpret what plant materials are invasive or aggressive in his region.”
Plants that invade areas beyond the back yard are carried by birds.
“Bird droppings are how the plants we consider invasive arrived at Cameron Park from family gardens,” said Burck Tollett, superintendent of parks for the city of Waco. “No person came to the park and planted these plants.”
Bamboo, chinaberry trees, mustang grapes and honeysuckle are choking out Texas natives in the park, he said.
While city employees have battled the bamboo into maintainability, he said, invasive plants continues to encroach on native Texas plants.
“I think that the issue of invasive plants will be one of the problems the parks department will confront in the next few years,” Tollett said.
Privet ligustrum is an aggressive grower that was spread to Cameron Park by droppings from birds who eat the fruit.
Susan Power Bratton photo
Aggressive growers such as nandina can shade out seedlings of native trees in locations such as Cameron Park.
Susan Power Bratton photo
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