A garden mystery solved
I simply have to give an update about an invasive-plant mystery I previously wrote about last year. In my post about my top three invasive plant nemeses in my garden, number three was the Japanese angelica tree. Here’s what I said about it in the summer of 2023:
The Japanese angelica tree taking over a garden bed during the summer of 2021.
This one continues to stump me as to its origins in my yard. As far as I can tell, it’s become a common invasive in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, but not so much in Wisconsin. This is part of why it took me so long to identify it: it doesn’t appear on the lists of invasive species in my state. How did it come to my yard? I’ll likely never know, but I’ll also never forget about it as I’ll be pulling it and its squishy rhizomes out for the rest of time.
I thought, I really don’t know how this particular problem ended up in my yard and I guess I never will.
WELL!
Last week, I was working on the little slope-y part of the side of my back yard (which I neglect because I can’t see it from my house) and I got to chatting with one of my neighbors, Mary. Her back yard abuts that slope-y part of my back yard (our properties aren’t parallel, but rather at odd angles, so her house is not actually next to mine and our yards don’t touch all the way from tip to tail). Mary’s an older woman who has lived in her house for many decades and remembers the decades-long former owner of our house. We were chatting as she tended to one of her big garden beds (beautifully—it is full of garden phlox and balloon flowers in mid- to late summer and the color combination is to die for, in my opinion) and I was hacking at weeds on my slope. She said how much she appreciated all of the cosmos in my backyard prairie last year so I made a mental note to add in more of those seeds for next year.
Now, to the point of this story. I showed her a bit of that Japanese angelica tree that was popping up and she said “I thought that was strange when Vi [former owner of our house] put that in years ago. I couldn’t understand why she did that.” Shocked, I responded, “what? She planted it on purpose?” And Mary said something like, “oh yes, she liked unusual things.”
So there it is! I was scratching my head trying to figure out how an invasive plant not at all common to Wisconsin made its way into my yard specifically when I’ve never seen it anywhere else nearby. And it turns out Vi, who was a resilient old gal, liked “odd” plants and put it in on purpose probably for some interesting shape and texture! I must say, I respect it. I love a gardener who takes risks and it was probably so long ago that the plant may not have been listed as invasive yet.
Now, every time I pull out a bit of that thorny nightmare trying its darnedest to take over my yard, I have a pleasant thought to go along with the odious task. It makes me think of Vi, a resilient old woman from whom we bought our house when she was 101 years old. She just passed away last week at the age of 104.
