Subject: Re: non-native introduction to ecosystems (fwd)
Date: Nov 30 16:30:50 1996
From: Allyn Weaks - allyn at cornetto.chem.washington.edu


>Same Weed Board
>Member has gotten Purple Loosestrife listed as a class B designate in
>Northeast King County and wants to get the biological controls there
>before thestreams and lakes are infested like occurs in the Seattle Area.
>(Sorry Seattlites, the state deems the urban area to far gone to list for
>control - just keep pulling :) )

The King County Weed Board told me this summer that Seattle and the
surrounding urban area is _not_ exempt from the County noxious weed list.
The King County list is the same as the WA State list for Class A and Class
B, with 7 of the Class B species being under quarantine in all of King
County, including purple loosestrife. In fact, the weed board is sometimes
even more concerned about noxious weeds in the city than in outlying areas
because a primary means of seed transport is on muddy car tires, and city
residents, complete with muddy and weedy alleys, have an awful lot of those
things wheeling their way all over the place to go skiing and camping and
birding :-)... But apparently this is the first year that the KC weed
board has actually had any funding to start doing anything about it, and
I'd expect that they don't have anywhere near enough funding to police
everywhere. So far, I've only contacted them about a couple of Class A
infestations (giant hogweed in my alley and some dyer's woad that appeared
(briefly :-)) in a UW Herb Garden bed) but they sounded very happy to send
out the inspectors to deal with it.

In case anyone is interested in seeing the whole list, I have the 1996 WA
state weed list online, along with some possibly useful phone numbers at:

http://chemwww.chem.washington.edu/natives/noxious.html

and the US Federal Noxious Weed list can be found at:

http://www.aphis.usda.gov/oa/weeds/weedhome.html



Allyn Weaks allyn at u.washington.edu
allyn at cornetto.chem.washington.edu
Pacific Northwest Native Plant Gardening:
http://chemwww.chem.washington.edu/natives/