Many of the rivers here in the southwest were dried up by the thirsty, invasive salt cedar bush also called tamarisk. It was intentionally imported into the United States for landscaping.



It's deceptively attractive with delicate pink flowers on lacy fronds. But tamarisk has displaced native vegetation on approximately 1.6 million acres of land in the Western United States and continues to spread. It is also a phreatophyte (or a plant that mines the water table).

Studies have shown that a mature tamarisk can uptake nearly 200 gallons of water a day. Although native trees in wet riparian areas can use more or less the same amount of water, they do not grow in as densely as the tamarisk. Due to this, the West is probably losing from 2- 4.5 million acre-feet of water per year because of tamarisk. This is enough water to supply more than 20 million people with water for one year or to irrigate over 1,000,000 acres of land.



"Is giant reed a ‘miracle plant’ or the next kudzu?
The Associated Press
Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012 | 9:04 a.m.

It's fast-growing and drought-tolerant, producing tons of biomass per acre. It thrives even in poor soil and is a self-propagating perennial, so it requires little investment once established.

To people in the renewable fuels industry, Arundo donax _ also known as "giant reed" _ is nothing short of a miracle plant. An Oregon power plant is looking at it as a potential substitute for coal, and North Carolina boosters are salivating over the prospect of an ethanol bio-refinery that would bring millions of dollars in investment and dozens of high-paying jobs to hog country.

But to many scientists and environmentalists, Arundo looks less like a miracle than a nightmare waiting to happen. Officials in at least three states have banned the bamboo-like grass as a "noxious weed"; California has spent more than $70 million trying to eradicate it. The federal government has labeled it a "high risk" for invasiveness.

Many are comparing Arundo, which can reach heights of 30 feet in a single season, to another aggressive Asian transplant _ the voracious kudzu vine.

More than 200 scientists recently sent a letter to the heads of federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, urging them not to encourage the commercial planting of known invasives like Arundo.

"Many of today's most problematic invasive plants _ from kudzu to purple loosestrife _ were intentionally imported and released into the environment for horticultural, agricultural, conservation, and forestry purposes," they wrote Oct. 22. "It is imperative that we learn from our past mistakes by preventing intentional introduction of energy crops that may create the next invasive species catastrophe particularly when introductions are funded by taxpayer dollars."

Mark Conlon, vice president for sector development at the nonprofit Biofuels Center of North Carolina in Oxford, hates the comparison with "the weed that ate the South."

"There's no market for kudzu," says Conlon, who is among those promoting a proposed $170 million, 20 million-gallon-a-year ethanol project here _ and Arundo's role in it. "There's no reason to manage it. It was thrown out in the worst places you can think of and left there."

His message about Arundo: It'll be different this time. We can control it.

But Mark Newhouser, who has spent nearly 20 years hacking this "nasty plant" from California's riverbanks and wetlands, has his doubts.

"Why take a chance?" he asks."

Makes me think of Where Have All the Flowers Gone: When will they ever learn?