Ecological degradation starts innocently enough. On a walk into town, an unexpected jolt of clear orange spotted peripherally doubled me back to the rack of plants always on offer outside the local senior’s center. For sale for $6, and I only had a rumpled fiver in my pocket, but I couldn’t walk away. Promising to come back with the proper amount, after some back-and-forth it was mine for $5.50. (Mid negotiation I found 50 cents in another pocket.). No one knew the name. I told Marty I think it’s a hawkweed. Weird that I would intuit the correct common name. And another vague intuition told me to confine it to a pot.
As soon as it was potted I did an image search: Pilosella aurantiaca (formerly hieracium), the Orange Hawkweed. From the Alps, it’s been in Oregon maybe since the 1920s.
For a brief moment I was hopeful it needn’t be bagged and tossed in the trash. With climate change stressing and pushing fauna and flora off their local patch, there’s been some nuance injected into the discussion of native vs. exotic, with the acknowledgement that some exotics may be useful where natives can no longer cope. And, encouragingly, Beth Chatto Gardens describes it as: “A jolly little plant that adds a dot of orange over a long period from mid-summer to autumn. Long bristly black stems bearing clusters of burnt orange flowers arise from hairy rosettes of basal leaves. Attractive to many pollinators and with a preference for poorer soils, this is one for dry, arid conditions, banks or wildlife gardens. Dainty seeds are dispersed by the wind.”
But giving the Orange Hawkweed the benefit of the doubt, with my enclosed garden within blocks of agricultural land, sounds like trouble for Oregon. It spreads by wind-driven seeds, stolons, and shallow rhizomes, a triple threat. And as if that wasn’t enough guarantee of survival, in its pursuit of monoculture, it possesses allelopathic abilities enabling it to suppress germination of surrounding flora. So add chemical warfare to its survival toolkit. It’s already a serious problem in Alaska. Also known as the Devil’s Paintbrush, an apt common name.
So seductively beautiful, so relentlessly aggressive. As a fan of all things orange, I was nearly recruited as one of its minions in aiding its pursuit of world domination, especially in cool wet climates. Marty jokingly said I should “drop a dime” on the sweet lady who sold it to me, aka report her to the invasive plant authorities. I’ll go back with an additional 50 cents and direct her to some info from the Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District.