Senecio inaequidens
This is a sibling of the common groundsel – a species in the same genus – but found mostly in the Mediterranean region, and on the Atlantic coast. It forms low tufts of yellow aster-like composite blooms, easily identifiable by its straight, linear leaves and ragged petals: the word ‘inaequidens’ means ‘unequal teeth’.
A tuft of Senecio in the vines
I’ve seen this flower a lot throughout the year, and especially lately when there’s not much other colour around. But it’s hard to find in the standard flower guides, and this may be because it’s judged to be an invasive species. Eventually I identified it with the aid of some botanic websites, and this raises two questions: do you really need an expensive illustrated flower guide these days if you have internet, and what does ‘invasive’ really mean?
The first question was also prompted by a friend in the village who wanted a guide which grouped plants by colour, and asked me to recommend one. I think the answer is ‘Yes, you do need one…..but only one’, because of the excellent resources on the web, which I’m going to review in my next post.
The issue of ‘invasion’ was raised in my last post by the two arrivals from South Africa: Carpobrotus edulis and Aptenia cordifolia, and I wanted to explore it a little more. There seem to be three major factors in judging invasiveness: when the plant arrived, how it arrived, and what consequences there are for previously-established flora and fauna.
So, the ‘when’ factor: the divide is the Columbian date, for practical purposes 1500 AD, when world trade is reckoned to have started. Those plants which arrived before then are ‘archaeophytes’ (old plants) – for example the poppy (Papaver rhoeas) which ‘invaded’ Europe in batches of seeds of cereals, several thousand years ago.
Poppy – familiar but invasive?
This post’s featured plant, Senecio inaequalidens, arrived in modern times, between 1934 and 1936 when its seeds were included in bales of sheep’s wool imported to Mazamet in southern France from the Cape of South Africa, as its French names, Séneçon du Cap, or Séneçon de Mazamet, testify. It is thus a ‘neophyte’. New plants are more of a threat because we – and the ecosystem – have had more time to deal with the old plants, and many ‘old’ invaders are useful – apples, pears and apricots all came from the Far East.
The ‘how’ factor seems to depend on the degree of human involvement and the distance carried – seeds carried on shoes and burrs on clothing travel typically only short distances, part of a natural pattern of dispersal. The long-distance transport of Senecio, although a likely consequence of trading, was not as deliberate as that of Carpobrotus and Aptenia since they were sought as garden plants, even if their escape has been unintentional. Travellers to Australia and America will know the precautions taken at Customs to exclude non-native species of plant – a gardening friend of ours from Adelaide would have loved to take back seeds, but knew she couldn’t.
And why couldn’t she? Because of the third factor, the consequences. Plants from far away often arrive where they have no natural pests or predators, and may find a climate and soil much more beneficial than the one in which they evolved to survive. If they have drought- or frost-resistance and some clever means of propagating in addition, they can spread like wildfire and supplant native species. An example familiar in Britain is the spread of Rhododendrons in wild areas of Snowdonia, after they were brought from the Himalayas in the 19th century to put in gardens, from which they escaped. Another is goldenrod ( Solidago canadensis), brought from North America to European gardens as an ornamental plant: it displaces native vegetation of fallow land in central Europe, especially in Germany where it is classed as invasive. The Black Locust tree (Robinia pseudoacacia) is native to the south-eastern USA, but has been widely planted in European city parks and roadsides because it tolerates pollution. Its seeds spread easily and now threaten some woodland communities especially in dry, poor soils.
What’s the bill for Senecio? Fairly resistant to frost (unlike the two succulents – we lost our pot of Aptenia last winter when it was minus seven), and to drought. It can be pollinated either by insects or wind, so it sets a lot of seed, which can be wind-dispersed – it doesn’t depend on an animal which might have been lacking in its ‘new’ home. The plant is toxic to neighbouring plants, and to most animals in this area, so it’s not eaten – except by one caterpillar. All these factors mean it has spread widely, though its range seems restricted to the milder climates of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast to Bordeaux.
Map from tela botanica showing reports of Senecio in France
So is it an invasive nuisance? On many counts, yes: a recent arrival, from far away, brought by human agency, and evolved to survive in the poorer soils of the Cape. And that’s probably why it’s not in many wild flower guides. But in practice the consequences are, so far, manageably small in the Midi at least, where it hasn’t taken the niche of a ‘native’ plant, and doesn’t threaten the established vines, regular ploughing and herbicides restricting it to the borders of vineyards and roadsides.
Jared Diamond
To apply the label ‘invasive’ is of course a bit of a nerve, when the most invasive species of any has been Homo sapiens. I’ve just been reading Jared Diamond’s fascinating book Guns, Germs and Steel, in which he shows how humankind spread from its African origins, and how disparities between human societies arose. He makes it clear, for example, that humans first arrived on the American continent via the Bering Strait and Alaska and entered what is now North America before 11,000 BC, and within a thousand years had spread to reach Tierra Del Fuego at the tip of South America. Along the way they hunted to extinction most of the large mammals they met, leaving little to domesticate and hence little incentive to settled, productive farming. The same story had been played out 40,000 years before in Australia when humans first arrived in that hitherto man-less continent from Indonesia – the animals for which fossil evidence exists all vanished, presumably eaten. Hunting small species and gathering was the only option left for the people who became called Aborigines. Our literal appetite for destruction and lack of foresight as a species does not bode well for our ability to face the current and pressing environmental challenges which we ourselves have caused, such as global warming and the spread of disease. You can hear a BBC interview with Prof. Diamond if you click here – it should be available at least till the end of 2013.
The case of Senecio inaequalidens reminds me that the pattern of plant dispersal is a story of constant change – we can’t define, let alone preserve an exclusively ‘native’ flora, just as we can’t define British, French or Catalan or any other race of people. The movement of musicians and musical styles is a further example, in fact I have a theory that music is only developing when it’s moving and finding new territories – jazz moving out of New Orleans, R&B arriving in Liverpool, Arabic and western musics meeting in medieval Spain. And here’s another example – the travels in the mid 60s of South African musicians, such as saxophonist and composer Dudu Pukwana, forbidden to play with white musicians or for mixed audiences in their own country, thus starting a stream of African influence in jazz. Dudu Pukwana was a strong element of Chris McGregor’s Blue Notes, and then of his Brotherhood of Breath.
This is Dudu Pukwana and Spear – ‘Sonia’ – from In the Townships, 1973.
Coming up next: Top of the bots – Which botany website?
an entangled bank 
as to invaders, london pride (the one that’s been handed down to us, according to maman noel) is, i think, the bastard offspring of a catalan and a west of irelander) . . . which i think makes it only more suitable as my city’s emblematic flower . . . why do some flowers take up with local boys/girls (so to speak)? while others don’t?
You’re right, london pride is a hybrid – I didn’t know the story till I looked it up just now, though my parents always grew it in the garden. What makes hybrids? – I suppose the botanical answer is that the species haven’t finally evolved apart enough to be unable to fertilise each other, but I’m sure there’s a more interesting answer in there somewhere. I’ll have to find a hybrid of a Catalan and French species – that could be the emblem of this village, so many people have one parent from each side of the Pyrenees.
As a Californian (San Diego) I think immediaely of Arundo donax, the Giant Reed, which is all over the South of France, and doesn’t seem to get out of control. In California this invasive, probably from the near east, obliterates any riparian plant community that it encounters. A group of us managed to rid an urban canyon in San Diego of this menace (lots of grant money) and return the canyon to its native garrigue-like vegetation, but it was a battle. This stuff takes over completely, and even one viable corm will start it up again.
So is Arundo donax what I’ve always called ‘bamboo’ and my garden friends call ‘roseau’? What we cut our tomato canes from? It certainly looks like it. If so, then I’d call it invasive because its dense growth does suppress other species. Though maybe it’s limited a bit by its liking for damp, it’s certainly hard to eliminate and if you managed to clear a canyon, well, chapeau!
It is often mistaken for bamboo. Both tend to be invasive, but in a wetland arundo is impossible to control except through freezing weather. In a warm climate like San Diego it just smothers everything, for acres and acres. It is roseau, that we use for our tomatoes. It was also used in old stone houses, in the floor/ceiling assembly. Planks (often rough cut and round on one side) were put down a few cms apart, and the space between filled with roseau, then a layer of lime plaster. After it was dry, sand on top to level it, and the old terre cuite tiles laid on it in another bed of chaux. My old stone shed had nothing but roseau over a few small trees cut in half, and the canal tiles on top. It worked, but the roseau was rotting and falling into the shed, so I had it redone, but I took photos of the old roof.
Thanks for that. Yes. I’ve got some in an old cave roof – I’m sure lots of us with old houses have got more than we know! Looking it up, I saw that it’s a plant which is very good at taking up atmospheric carbon, so it may do some good. I’ll have to do the maths for what acreage would equate to average car use, let alone flights – my guess is that most of the planet would have to be covered though.
I never knew that Golden Rod could be such a problem. My Mum had several clumps of it in the garden where I grew up and we used to use the long stem with the flower head bent and dangling down as a lantern in our games. A friend has just given us some bits of root which I’ve planted at the Mas… it’ll never manage to be invasive there though. I’m learning a lot from your blog!
Yes, my family grew it in the garden too – well, one species anyway. There are quite a few, and it seems to be the Canadian sort that’s a problem in Germany. After a few months of blogging, I’m looking at garden flowers differently too: most are from other parts of the world and that strikes me as a bit odd.
I’m often amused/perturbed by the parallels between attitudes towards invasive species and (some) attitudes to human immigrants: with many similar words or notions cropping up; of ‘taking over’, ‘colonizing’ ‘crowding out’ and using resources (benefits) that are not theirs by birth.
As you say many ‘alien’ plant species have been around so long that they have acquired honorary status as part of our flora, just as Viking and Norman invaders put down roots and became British; it’s the more recent arrivals like Japanese knotweed and Himalayan balsam that create most concern, panic even. They are of course extremely efficient opportunists even if they don’t provide us with the enormously useful corner shops and take-aways that we have come to rely on.
You’ve put a lot of what I – a recent alien, but not very efficient – wanted to say much more succinctly. I’m toying with a follow-up stimulated by a concept I saw on the Tela Botanica site – ‘phytosociology’ – I don’t think it means what I thought it did, but all’s fair in blogging and I’m going to be like Humpty Dumpty in Alice and make words mean what I want.
Pingback: Fitting in – the lifestyles of plants | an entangled bank