INVASIVE ALERT: Lesser Celandine Found in Watershed

While visiting Durham this past week, I was driving through the Watts Hospital-Hillandale neighborhood when I saw a blaze of yellow and thought "Oh, oh."

First time I saw this plant, in Princeton, NJ, I thought it was pretty. Then I saw how it was spreading rapidly through nature preserves, displacing native wildflowers as it forms dense, impenetrable colonies.

I happened to know the woman whose yard it was growing in, and stopped to knock on her door. She gave me a tour. She was quite proud of the yellow flower (Ranunculus ficaria--sometimes called Fig Buttercup or Lesser Celandine), and had received many compliments from neighbors on its beauty.

She had, though, noticed that it was starting to take over.

In the five or so years since it spontaneously showed up in her yard, it had spread along her walkway, made blotchy mounds in her front lawn,

and even started to push back on her english ivy.

It's hard to ask any homeowner who has been pleased with a flower to begin viewing it as an ecological threat to the watershed. Just beyond this quickly spreading patch in her backyard is a small tributary of Ellerbe Creek, which in turn is a tributary of the Neuse River.

If, or more likely, when, the lesser celandine in her yard gets in to the creek, it will spread rapidly downstream.

But it's pretty, one might say, and survival of the fittest is nature's law. But this exotic plant left its natural predators back in Europe, and so has an unnatural competitive advantage over native species. Since nothing appears to eat it, any floodplain or yard that Lesser Celandine comes to dominate will become devoid of food to sustain wildlife.

The best thing that can happen in this instance is to have the invasive sprayed, and replaced with plants that won't take over. If the homeowner can be convinced the lesser celandine is a menace, there's hope it can be stopped before it spreads to the creek.

For a fact sheet on this plant, go to: http://www.invasive.org/weedcd/pdfs/wgw/lessercelandine.pdf Note that the distribution map doesn't even show it as having spread yet to NC.