Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Problem of invasive plants

Hello:)
this short post of mine will be about problems of invasive plants. Yesterday I borrowed a book written by a woman who works in Department of Systemic Botany in my university about Polish invasive plants. It is all written in English and I will try to write more about ... healing properties of these Polish invasive plants soon. Becasue I think each disaster should have its positive meaning too.
So invasive plants are bad because they harm local biodiveristy but they can have healing/poisonosus properties and thus they can be generally usefull for human beings.

Invasive plants are valid problem for nature conservation. As deals international organisations enough to write that IUCN has even a special section for solving problems of invasive plants.
You can read more below about this section:
http://www.issg.org/

IUCN makes general worldwide list of invasive plants that contain the most invasive plants around the world.
Latest Polish list of so called kenophytes (invasive plants) comprises about 260 species.
I am not sure any of it is placed on IUCN list. I will check it soon.

To explain problem of kenophytes I would like to write that one of worldwide most problematic plants in different area of the world is... giant mimosa.
You can read more beneath:

A dense, thorny thicket is encroaching upon the biodiversity rich wetlands of Vietnam and Australia, threatening ecosystems and the livelihoods of the people who rely on them. Giant mimosa (Mimosa pigra), an invasive shrub from central and south America, grows in dense thickets replacing native vegetation in tropical wetlands.
In Australia, the shrub grows so densely that Aborigines who traditionally use the areas for food gathering can no longer pass.
In Vietnam the loss of biodiversity threatens the natural resource-based livelihoods of 55 million people who live in the Lower Mekong Basin. But humans aren’t the only ones suffering at the points of the mimosa’s thorns, several threatened species are at risk as well. The Mekong basin is home to nearly 100 globally threatened species, such as the giant ibis and sarus crane that are dependent upon these wetlands.

And here is a picture of m problematic mimosa :


Lets hope some Polish invasive plants have also advantages - not only disadvantages.
Read me soon:)

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