Monday, April 13, 2009

First Invasive of Spring


Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica)

It's still pretty cold in the Don. Things are slowly budding but not much blooming yet, except for the non-native stuff. This was the only thing I saw in bloom on a trip to Todmorden Mills (of course I didn't do a full inspection so the Skunk Cabbage could've been flowering as well).

Scilla siberica is a hardy spring perennial that can dominate forest understorey, according to the SER handbook on invasives although according to Bootstrap Analysis it doesn't seem to affect other spring ephemerals such as Trillium and Mayapple. The Invasive Species Weblog doesn't even mention it.

It appears the jury is still out whether this is a harmless garden escapee or something to worry about.

1 comment:

steve s said...

But where you see Scilla there's usually nothing else so that's a warning sign.

The earliest (invasive too) is Snowdrop, which has been out for 2 weeks already. Skunk cabbage have been out for a bit.