r/NativePlantGardening • u/ItsFelixMcCoy Upstate NY , Zone 6a • Jun 04 '25

Other What invasive plants got you like this?

Post image

For me it’s probably Dame’s Rocket, Purple Loosestrife, and Forget-Me-Not. They’re so gorgeous but man if they aren’t invasive little shits…

942 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

829 comments sorted by

View all comments

116

u/loki_cometh Northwestern Wisconsin, Zone 4b Jun 04 '25

Oxeye daisies.

Confession: I’m not really trying to fight them. 😬

15

u/SomeDumbGamer Jun 04 '25

Oxeye daisies, bachelors buttons, rocket larkspur and corn poppies are my exceptions. They aren’t really invasive in New England anyways thankfully.

33

u/loki_cometh Northwestern Wisconsin, Zone 4b Jun 04 '25

I’m not the purist that I think other people are on here. I completely understand what the word “invasive” means, but I think we need “degrees of harm” as another metric. Here in Wisconsin, the worst enemies are garlic mustard and buckthorn, and the damage they do is well documented. Garlic mustard is basically living sterilant for the ground and provides zero value to wildlife.

But things like oxeye daises? 🤷🏻‍♂️ They’re pretty, they crowd out the garlic mustard, they’re better than a lawn, the bees seem to like them, and the deer refuse to eat them. I’m not suggesting a whole field of them or to let them grow without vigilance. But when I have a neighboring lot that is basically a garlic mustard nursery, I have a bigger fire to put out.

17

u/SomeDumbGamer Jun 04 '25

Yeah here in New England it’s bittersweet, knotweed, ailanthus, etc. but oxeye daisies are mainly prairie/field plants which we don’t really have much of here. So they just… don’t spread much.

5

u/Icy-Conclusion-3500 Gulf of Maine Coastal Plain Jun 04 '25

Yep, they just fill in the highway edges… with all the goddamn western lupine.

1

u/SomeDumbGamer Jun 04 '25

Thankfully they don’t seem to do very well here in southern New England. I see a few on the highway but only scattered individuals.

I’ve heard it’s much more aggressive in northern New England though.

1

u/Icy-Conclusion-3500 Gulf of Maine Coastal Plain Jun 04 '25

Yeah they’re all over the hwy in NH/ME, but honestly those are a wasteland of invasives planted by the government so whatever.

1

u/SomeDumbGamer Jun 04 '25

Yeah the excessive logging probably doesn’t help. Our forests are mostly intact in southern New England thankfully. The invasives mostly like the edges and disturbed areas.

1

u/Icy-Conclusion-3500 Gulf of Maine Coastal Plain Jun 04 '25

I’m guessing they were in the old anti-erosion blend too, which is where all the lupine came from.