Plants of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

Notes: Purple Loosestrife has been present in the Garden for a long time; Eloise Butler was the first to note it, logging on July 15, 1916 that it was beginning to blossom. In 1921 she noted the plant had "escaped" and was growing in the North Meadow. Martha Crone noted it in bloom on July 31, 1939 and also listed it on her 1951 Garden Census. Originally introduced from Europe as a garden perennial, it has invaded and spread across the United States and southern Canada. Only Arizona and a few gulf coast states seem to have escaped it. In Minnesota it is found in a number of counties, principally in the eastern half of the state. Noxious: In Minnesota it is listed as a "Prohibited noxious weed" which precludes it's sale by any nursery. In recent decades it has been the successful target of extirpation by biological means, using a particular beetle (Galerucella spp.) that feeds on the plant and gradually weakens it so it cannot produce seed. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has successfully used this method to remove the plant from nearby Birch Pond (pictured above). Their program began in 1997 and by 2000 the pond was free of Loosestrife. In the Garden it is under strict control. Chemical control requires glyphosate. The plant has remained under strict control in the Garden and has been allowed to remain for historical reasons.

As noted above, it was not originally apparent how invasive the plant would be. The Minneapolis Sunday Tribune would even state "The Purple Loosestrife grows as high as six feet in wet meadows and margins of pools. A welcome European immigrant which usually grows in dense colonies, it rewards us for our hospitality with showy masses of color like this." (Picture Magazine, May 21, 1950, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune). The article pictured Birch Pond (above). Little did they suspect just how well we would be rewarded!.

Monet's garden at Giverny grows Purple Loosestrife, among other tall plants for summer color and height, along the Grand Allée. Monet would even bank the soil to make some of the plants look even taller. (Ref.# 36a)

Planting was still advocated into the 1960's. Former Curator Martha Crone did so, but also acknowledged the invasive tendency in this comment: "It is a good plant to grow along streams, margins of ponds or in wet meadows. Especially where the competition is too severe for less aggressive plants to grow. The Plant is a long-lived perennial and produces graceful spikes of purple or pink flowers. They bloom during July and August. When once established it is hard to eradicate and will crowd out other weaker growing plants. It can be grown in garden borders where it remains smaller and does not spread. This six-petaled flower has 12 stamens [ed. note - actually 8 or 10] of two different lengths, and the length of the single pistil varies in different flowers; this is termed by botanists as trimorphous. Only pollen from stamens of the same length can pollinate stigmas, therefore each flower is sterile to its own pollen, thus ensuring the vigor of the race." Published in the Fringed Gentian ™ April 1958, Vol. 6 #2