The Most Savage of All Life Forms

I just finished browsing a cute little article in the New York Times entitled, "Taking on a Lake-Eating Monster in East Texas." You can find it at
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/us/30lake.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin


Anyways, the article sparked my interest because it is about a highly invasive aquatic weed from South American named Salvinia molesta. Apparently, the weed is currently attacking Caddo Lake, a beautiful and historic site in Southern Texas. The article doesn't really go into the biology of invasive species - preferring to quote the colorful natives at length instead (which is why the article is cute).
My favorite is quoted from this New York Times article, below:

“It’s your classic 1950s drive-in-movie-monster plant,” said Jack Canson, director of a local preservation coalition and a former Hollywood scriptwriter who, under the pseudonym Jackson Barr, co-wrote a B-movie plant thriller, “Seedpeople,” released in 1992."

Hmmmm. Seedpeople. Sounds pretty catchy actually. I took the liberty of looking up the film and discovered that there is a scene where a peice of vegetation actually kills a man by stoning him with Corn Pops. Corn Poppin him to death. Another good one liner I garnered from www.badmovies.org

"Plants are the most cunning and savage of all life forms."


I should keep these words in mind as I complete my mind-numbing rounds of daily watering.

But invasives are interesting to think about. They are kind of like a glitch in the Matrix - some peice of code gone afoul, broken out of its train-station hideaway. The plants we work with in our lab are also invasives - members of that insidious genus, Polygonum. But the interesting thing is that the species we are currently studying, like many others, became invasive only recently. What makes an invasive species become invasive? Of course, there is a certain amount of human egging on - we have mobilized plants, flown them across continents and shipped them over seas, and we do this every day thousands of times. But when is the moment when the plant, or any species, decides, enough is enough, and begins to evolve, to hybridize - to outcompete and then smother its new neighbors. Theories abound.

Sorry for the overdone prose. I just finished reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessel. I recommend it. I was thoroughly arrested by her prose and her scary, twisted plot - and her lovable narrator.