Invasive species are not spread by nurseries.
Birds, wind, water, tillage equipment, and bulk grain transfer spread the unwanted plants. Some species come into the USA via boat with imported goods of all kinds.
???
Hall's Honeysuckle (Japanese Honeysuckle) / Lonicera japonica is just one example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonicera_japonica
Even though it is a highly invasive and destructive plant, this species is often sold by American nurseries as the cultivar 'Hall's Prolific' (Lonicera japonica var. halliana)...
It's specifically listed as invasive by most state agricultural extensions.
You can also buy it on Amazon.com
https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Honeysuckle-Lonicera-japonica-Plant/dp/B01HHLH0N4
Pinging Diana in Wisconsin who hosts the Weekly Garden Thread
“Invasive species are not spread by nurseries.
Birds, wind, water, tillage equipment, and bulk grain transfer spread the unwanted plants. Some species come into the USA via boat with imported goods of all kinds.”
Here at my hood we were hit by a major hurricane about 5 years ago and since then we have had all sorts of weird plants popping up all over. News media have done several stories on what they are and how they arrived. It was not the fault of a nursery but a natural storm—Mother Nature.
Yup. Like Russian Thistle. Also known as the tumbleweed.
Initially, nurseries are the problem in some cases. The flowering white pear will take over North America, one subdivision at a time. Don’t even get me started on that damnable pestilence Bush Honeysuckle (originally sold by nurseries back in the 60s as privacy screens).
Or stupid people planting bamboo because “It’s pretty!”
Most seem to some from Asia, especially China.
Exactly right.
When I moved into my former house I had BITTERSWEET vines growing all over the place. Some of the vines were 2 1/2” in diameter where they grew out of the ground. I cut and sprayed with ORTHO Ground Clear for several years to bring it under control.
My 80 year old neighbor said that it had all come from a 5’ diameter Christmas Wreath that the people across the road had hung on their barn one year. Bittersweet gets these pretty red berries on it in the fall. So, people will cut the vine and form it into round wreaths and sell it at nurseries.
He said they left this wreath up for six months. The birds then ate all the berries and spread the seeds all over the neighbor hood. This had apparently happened twenty years before I ever bought this house. All the vines had grown up from that wreath.
The problem with Bittersweet is that it grows up into the canopy of trees. Eventually overwhelming the trees capacity to hold the weight. Then the tree eventually breaks.
I invested in a Stihl Straight shaft bicycle grip brush cutter. The kind with the circular saw blade on it. I cut and sprayed for a couple years. That property was also full of dead Mountain Laurel. So much so that you could not walk around the woods on the property. I cut that down piled it up and burned it.
To a degree, they sometimes are. Every plant or seed catalog I have ever seen has had at least one plant they’re selling that is considered invasive in some part of the US. And the listing doesn’t always warn people, so they may not know they’re buying something invasive. Especially if it goes by multiple names.
As an example, one of my favorite seed companies that specializes in medicinal herbs, often has Alehoof seeds in their catalog. It’s a useful herb and a good groundcover. It’s also known as Creeping Charlie, the bane of lawns and gardens in my area. Once it gets a foothold, you can never get rid of it!
For that matter, some of the medicinal herbs I’ve had trouble getting established, are actually considered noxious weeds in their home territories.
That’s not even getting into the problem of contaminated soil, or infested lumber that is often sold for landscaping purposes.
So, it makes sense that nurseries are a factor in the spread of invasive species. You can debate how big a factor they might be, but to say they don’t play a part at all is not logical.