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For many years there has been a debate about the invasive reed grass, Phragmites.
Native or non-native is the question.
Phragmites australis, is the common reed which, all agree, dominates its wetland surroundings as soon as it is introduced, irregardless of its origins.
Some environmental agencies have sought to protect it, believing it to be native,
while other states and conservationists have used every method to destroy it, believing it to be a non-native invader.
Also called common reed, the phragmites usually grows about 6 feet high but a 15 foot stand is not uncommon.
It has a straight stalk with 8 to 10 inch long narrow alternating leaves and a light tan feathery flower.
The leaves fall with a freeze but the hollow stalk remains and the "feathers" turn darker brown.
This invasive plant thrives all over the world in fresh or saltwater wetlands, along waterways and in roadside ditches.
It spreads as its roots, called rhizomes, travel underground.
It often gets started in an area where the ground has been broken, such as in culvert construction.
Once it gets hold it forms a thick stand of single species plants that choke out every other plant variety.
Animal species that rely on the plants which are killed off by the densely packed phragmites plants are threatened
and are showing up on state endangered species lists all over the US.
The muskrats that depend on the cattails are lost when the phragmites crowd them out.
The birds whose diets must include a variety of grasses and vegetation are starved out when the phragmites takes over.
About 9 years ago, when I was amazed that the New York State DEC sought to protect phragmites, I had conversations with other agencies in other states.
I discovered that Maryland provided new native marsh plants to any Chesapeake Bay area resident to plant in place of the phragmites that were killed off,
with no questions about how the phragmites were eliminated.
Wow, there's a difference of opinion.
New York protected phragmites as a native species while
Maryland considered it an evil invader.
So who was correct?
I was delighted to read an article in Newsday (October 22, 2002) called "Marsh Marauders" which answered the question for me.
The article tells about a Yale doctoral researcher
who studied the historic native phragmites that was documented with fossil evidence
dating 3000 years in Connecticut and compared it with the phragmites plants along the Atlantic coastline today.
The currently present phragmites species looks the same but it is ecologically different.
The scientist analyzed the DNA of the aggressive modern phragmites with historical specimens and concluded
that they are genetically different.
The modern phragmites first appeared in North America in the 19th century, probably at an Atlantic Coast port.
Today native phragmites plants are found along the Atlantic only in Chance, Virginia and Allen, Maryland.
No native plants were found on Long Island.
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