Invasive Plants of California's Wildlands

Invasive Plants of California's Wildlands

By Carla C Bossard, John M Randall, and Marc C Hoshovsky University of California Pres 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94720 360 p illus. $2995 ISBN 0-520-22547-3 Reviewed by dint of David Pimentel, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-0901

Invasive Plants of California's Wildlands provides detailed information upon the biology and control of 78 nonnative plant species that were listed as Exotic Invasive Plants of Greatest Ecological pertain to by the California Exotic infection Plant Council. These invasive, nonnative species were discussed because they are already growing wild in California and are causing or have the potential to be a serious threat to state parks, defends and other wildlands.

The authors give an inkling of that normative invasive plants are single of the worst threats to California's populations of native plant species. The authors not at any time mentioned that The Nature Conservancy reported that invasive species in the United States are the cause for 42% of the species that are upon the endangered and/or threatened species list. These data would support their position.

As mentioned, the work provides details on the biology and command of invasive plant species that are a threat to California's parklands and wildlands. The information provided concerning these pest-plant species is extremely well done. Each section provides information upon how to recognize the plant; where it is lay the foundation of in California; the location of its native home; question s that the plant causes; by what means it grows and reproduces; and physical, biological, chemical, and other ascendencys In addition, a map is provided for the distribution of the plant in California, plus black-and-white descriptive drawings and colored photographs of the plant growing in the wild. All this valuable information will be of great help to those interested in these invasive fatal epidemic plants.

Other sections of the whirl provide information concerning the biological characteristics of plant species greatest in quantity likely to be invasive. Also, information is provided upon habitats and ecosystems most likely to be invaded by the agency of the nonnative plant species.

In the section upon management and control of invasive plant species, the authors first mention prevention, which is extremely important. They state that "stopping just individual new invasive weed would be of greater conservation benefit in the drawn out run than far more of great price and difficult efforts to command an already widespread pest" (p 22) They should also have mentioned the importance of educating the public to avoid bringing exotic sperms and plants into the United States. All exotic plants are a potential threat to the U environment and should not be introduced. Surprisingly, hardly any people understand the risks of invasive species.

The authors praise biological sway as an extremely selective tool for command of invasive species. They propose there is some risk of introducing biocontrol agents because of their potential to attack desirable species. They give the example of a beetle (Rhinocyllus conicus) that was introduced for sway of a nonnative thistle now reported to be feeding upon several native thistle species. I agree that this biological direction beetle should never have been introduced and other biocontrol agents sought However, the beetle is providing superintendence of the introduced thistle population. The authors should have discussed the ecological trade-offs of introducing this beetle versus not introducing the beetle (doing nothing) or using an herbicide for rule of the thistle. If nothing were done, the normative thistle would have continued to spread, displacing native thistles as well as other plant species, causing serious ecological damage. Herbicides can be used for dominion government of invasive thistles but they also kill other plant species, including native thistle species.

The authors also not ever mentioned an alternative to classical biological ascendency that is now being widely used. The approach includes finding potential biocontrol agents upon relatives of the target weed species. This approach has proven three times more effective than classical biocontrol and no ecological question s have occurred to date. Great caution should be exercised with biocontrol manners because there are risks associated with introductions of any non-native species. However, the risk of doing nothing, as with the introduced thistle, might be a greater threat than the risk of introducing a biocontrol agent.

Overall, this is an of the best book with extremely valuable information upon the biology and control of 78 species of nonnative plant species that have invaded the wildlands of California. The work should be of interest to ecologists, conservation biologists, infection control specialists, wildlife managers, forest specialists, geographers, and the public, who may have their domicile grounds invaded by introduced plant species.

Copyright Society of American Foresters Aug 2001

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