The Invaders

Some 1,285 plant species are currently designated as invasive in the United States.

—New York Botanical Garden Center for Conservation and Restoration Ecology

What price Shakespeare's starlings' murmuration,

let loose in Central Park by Eugen Schieffelin,

a man whose own forebears hailed from Baden-Württemberg.*

Beset by animal, vegetative, and human invaders

from alien venues planetwide,

there’s this small consolation:

despite the ubiquity of kudzu,

we're still the fastest gun in any zoo!

Uproot the bittersweet, pluck out periwinkle,

porcelain berry vine, and Japanese knotweed

(though that might physic you against Lyme).

And while you’re at it, have Bella put to sleep;

she kills our native birds—which makes one weep!

And Kelpie Buddy, too; he herds nonnative sheep!

* Schieffelin, an amateur ornithologist, supposedly wanted to introduce all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare in America. To that end, he released sixty British starlings in Central Park, New York, in 1890. "His attempts to introduce bullfinches, chaffinches, nightingales, and skylarks were not successful," Wikipedia says.

Saturday, July 5, 2025