Exotic plants cost taxpayers millions

Some spread from unknowing homeowners’ gardens

Charlotte Sun
Aug. 28, 2008
 
By NEIL HUGHES
Staff Writer

It doesn’t attack, it doesn’t eat — it doesn’t even move. It’s just a plant.

Yet to suppress all of the invasive exotics on public land in Florida right now would cost the state an estimated $980 million, said Ed Freeman, an exotic plant expert with Sarasota-based environmental group Wildlands Conservation.

And that nearly-billion dollar cost would cover just 11 million acres of public land.

Currently, the state of Florida spends $38 million per year in addressing exotics. Exotic plants are such a problem in our state, Freeman said, because most of the nation’s exotic plants find their way to the continent by way of Florida.

“About 95 percent of the plants that are brought into the country come into the Port of Miami,” he said. “We’re the first place that a lot of these exotics are brought to.”

Some plants were introduced to Florida’s ecosystem with a purpose. Australian melaleuca was brought in to drain swampland, and now inhabits most of Florida’s waterways

Others were planted just because they’re pretty. That’s the back story for the Brazilian peppertree, a pest plant that spreads like wildfire — and would thrive after a wildfire, too.

Today, most plants sold at any local nursery are exotics. Some of them could take over an entire home garden, and some might spread beyond that, with seeds inadvertently spread by humans, animals or just the wind.

“Something that one day is an ornamental is a weed the next time,” said Ralph Mitchell, director and horticulture agent for the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences extension in Charlotte County.

Some problem plants like the air potato can engulf and kill off entire native plants, growing high in the sky and covering tall trees from top to bottom. Because of their destructive presence, it’s important to remove them.

The problem is knowing what to remove, and how. But with enough effort and education, Freeman said, exotics can be brought under control.

“They can be dealt with,” he said. “There are success stories.”