Weed Heroes: The War on the Invader Cogongrass

By DAN BARRY
Published: September 20, 2009

MONTGOMERY, Ala.

The State of Alabama has just dedicated $6 million in federal stimulus money to
combat a certain invasive weed, and the two men chosen to lead this ground war
can already hear you laughing. Millions of dollars to kill some weeds? Sounds
like another good-old-boy boondoggle. Heh-heh-heh.

But we’re not talking dandelions here. This weed is the killer weed, the
nearly indestructible weed, The Weed From Another Continent �" a weed that
evokes those old science-fiction movies in which clueless citizens ignore
reports of an alien invasion, leaving the heroes to rail in frustration:

The fools! Don’t they understand? This is cogongrass!

Two weeks ago, our two heroes began operating the Alabama Cogongrass Control
Center out of the drabbest office in the drab Alabama Forestry Commission
building, here in Montgomery. The small room is so spare, with its empty
bookshelves and bare wood-paneled walls, that it seems to exist in black and
white, save for a large, color-coded map of Alabama on a table.

Dozens of tiny green bubbles dot the map, particularly throughout the bottom
third of the state. Each one represents a GPS-identified location of the enemy:
cogongrass (Imperata cylindrica), also known as the Perfect Weed, and considered
one of the 10 worst weeds in the world.

It can take over fields and forests, ruining crops, destroying native plants,
upsetting the ecosystem. It is very difficult to kill. It burns extremely hot.
And its serrated leaves and grainy composition mean that animals with even the
most indiscriminate palates �" goats, for example �" say no thanks.

“Southwest Alabama is just solid with it,” says Ernest Lovett, the project
coordinator, as he studies his map. Soon he will be dispatching advance teams
across this field of engagement to spray herbicides that are best known by their
aggressive commercial names, Arsenal and Roundup.

Mr. Lovett, 61, is a big, white-haired man who is proud to say he was born in a
back bedroom of the family home in an Arkansas place called Needmore. After
retiring from a long career in forestry, he joined Larson & McGowin, a land
management company in Mobile that won the bid to halt cogongrass’s advancement
in Alabama.

“I wanted one more war project before I quit,” says Mr. Lovett, who served
two years in the Army and another 23 in the Reserves.

On the map before him, the top two-thirds of the state �" everything north of
U.S. Highway 80 �" is shaded red. Mr. Lovett explains why:

“The overall strategy: to attack. To draw a line using Highway 80 and
eradicate north of it. Then, in phases, try to control it south. There will be a
lot of parallel attacks.”

His project partner, Stephen Pecot, 38, listens, grim-faced. A forester as well,
he is the team’s bearded academic and communications director, someone who
spent a decade researching the longleaf pines of southern Georgia. He may be
more liberal in his politics than Mr. Lovett, but he is no dove when it comes to
cogongrass.

Left unchecked, he says, “It could spread all the way to Michigan.”

The story of cogongrass follows the familiar science-fiction theme of humankind
reaping what it has sown, through arrogance, stupidity or some other frailty.
Conduct nuclear testing, say hello to mutants. Be careless with nonnative
species, say hello to cogongrass.

It is believed that in the winter of 1911-12, shipments of satsuma orange
rootstocks from Japan arrived in Grand Bay, about 25 miles south of Mobile. And
what was being used as packing material for these shipments? Cogongrass, of
course.

For a while, government officials encouraged the use of cogongrass as a forage
crop and as a way to stem soil erosion. These efforts failed, a state document
says, and “the plant unfortunately was allowed to escape” �" across
southern Alabama, into Florida, Mississippi, and beyond.

Now, come springtime, you can see its white feathery tufts, surrendering seeds
to the wind. Come summer, the yellow-green blades can rise six feet high. Then,
during winter, the grass turns brown but often remains erect, as if in defiance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/us/21land.html?_r=1