Sweetly scented Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) is currently in bloom in a naturalized area around our silo. It grows under a patch of sumacs. As I walked my dog down the laneway in the dark last night, I was captivated again by this wildflower’s gorgeous perfume.
Dame's rocket growing under our sumacs: Is this really a dangerous plant?
Recently, I was interested to read in his Transatlantic Plantsman blog that like me, garden expert Graham Rice wonders if this invasive plant designation is actually warranted. Rice makes the case that fear of dame’s rocket out-competing native plants is misplaced:
And let’s take a look at one interesting piece of research undertaken by the US Geological Survey and presented at their 93rd annual meeting just a couple of years ago – as it happens, in Wisconsin. In summary: They marked out twenty plots in which dames rocket was growing; they measured the cover for every plant species present in each plot; they pulled the dames rocket out of half the plots; then for three years they assessed the flora in both sets of plots.
The result: “Removal did not significantly affect species richness and species diversity”. “In the three years, neither native nor exotic forbs, nor native woody plants, significantly responded to the removal of H. matronalis.”
As Rice points out, issues around native versus non-native plants (so-called alien invasives) are often not as cut and dried as they seem. I love the perfume and color of dame’s rocket at this time of year, and consider it a perfectly well behaved wildflower, unlike that pest, garlic mustard which is beginning to invade the woods around here.
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I think it’s lovely. Would rather have this one than many of the others out there.
I don’t think Hesperis matronalis warrants the ethnic-cleansing ethos of some of the more strident native plants-people — at least not in Ontario. And I love it in the border as a foil to lupines, blue flax and bearded irises. Since it’s biennial, it’s pretty easy to clear out if you don’t want it. But I confess: I’m one who sneaks the seedheads of oxeye daisiy off the sides of Ontario country highways in late June, a plant you can’t actually buy in seed or plant because the Ontario government deems it a noxious weed. Mea culpa. But nothing else, except ragweed, thrives as a first “cover crop’ in the acidic sand I have up north. Later, “natives” like beardtongue, beebalm, heliopsis and coreopsis take over, muscling the oxeye daisies out.)
I didn’t know oxeye daisy is considered a noxious weed in Ontario. It grows on the margins in the woods at the tree farm behind our property, and I always enjoy its flowers, and it appears to be well-behaved. It sometimes appears in our lawn too.
Thanks for easing my Dames’ Rocket guilt. Rosa multiflora is also wonderfully fragrant, but I have no compunction about yanking that–when I can!
Me too, I always rip out multiflora rose.
I think wildflowers get ripped off. Meadows of wildflowers with or without scents are beautiful. I spent the last month looking for sweet rockets at different nurseries and finally found some. I was delighted. Now I am looking for some goldenrod; another plant that was in my grandmother’s garden when I was a child.