Scientists Admit Defeat - Phragmites is Here For Good

Bay Journal, For better or worse, invasive phragmites is here to stay

Few phenomena of the past century have altered the landscape and the ecology of the Chesapeake Bay, experts say, as much as the invasion of a straw-like saltmarsh weed from the opposite side of the world.

Its Latin name, Phragmites australis, presents something of a geographic misnomer. Australia is where the species was first fully described in scientific literature. But the genetic strain that now pervades the Bay area originated in Europe, Asia and North Africa, researchers say.

As far as scientists can surmise, the now-dominant variety probably crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a ship’s ballast water in the 1800s. Surveys began finding it in marshy patches in Maryland beginning in the 1910s.

Now, phragmites (pronounced “frag-MY-teez”) can be found just about anywhere the soil is typically wet: waving in the breeze along the Bay’s shoreline, engulfing abandoned homes on the rural Eastern Shore, sprouting in ditches outside suburban strip malls.

The last major survey of phragmites in the Bay region, led by College of William and Mary researchers in 2008, found that the weed covered 15% of shorelines in Maryland’s shoreline and 2% in Virginia. The highest coverage — encompassing 30% of a 200-mile stretch of serpentine coastline — was in an area along the middle Eastern Shore, above and below the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

Land managers and researchers have long regarded the phragmites takeover as a negative change for the Bay. The plant grows in claustrophobic thickets too dense for most local wildlife. It easily crowds out native grasses. And its tall stalks are a scourge to waterfront property owners trying to preserve their views.

But as P. australis has gained an all but permanent foothold, that hardline consensus has softened. In perhaps the latest environmental exemplification of the phrase “if you can’t beat them, join them,” longtime phragmites critics are grudgingly acknowledging its positives.

“It’s a mixed bag,” said Dennis Whigham, a senior botanist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, MD, who has published several studies on ways to fight phragmites. “You can look at it positively, and you can look at it negatively.”

To be sure, no one in the scientific community is advocating for surrendering to the plant’s spread. But recent developments, including a surge in research on potential environmental benefits and a shift toward less-ambitious management methods, signal a new chapter in the phragmites saga.

“In the Chesapeake Bay, it’s too late,” Whigham added. “There’s already so much phragmites that it’s not possible economically to eliminate it. It’s here to stay.”

We have a couple of stands of Phrag along our beach, especially in places where  freshwater come down to the Bay. It's amazing how much the patches have expanded in the last few years.

The Wombat has a double-stuffed Rule 5 Sunday: Vengeance Bikinis ready for consumption.