Protect Native Plants

In last week’s “Garden Q&A;” column, Robert Smaus gave the most sensible reply to a Topanga resident who asked how to keep raccoons from disturbing a newly laid sod lawn: “A sod lawn has no business in Topanga.”

I am also puzzled about why people move to a natural and fairly wild area and then try to drag all the accessories of the city there.

Most of the plant pests in Topanga are accidental or well-intended but wrongheaded introductions of exotic plants with habits and traits that enable their survival in their original habitats. But they also may have had competitors (plant, insect or herbivore) or conditions there to keep them well-mannered.

The latest pest is a viney plant that is rather pretty as a potted plant (and that’s probably helped it become introduced to areas). But Senecio mikanioides, commonly known as Cape Ivy or German Ivy, from South Africa is a serious, almost sinister pest, as it appears innocuous, lacking barbs, having soft leaves and twining stems which break easily and bright yellow flowers. At first the gardener may tolerate this new visitor to his garden.

In a matter of two to three years, it will completely cover vast areas of a Topanga hillside. As a vine, it can slip down slopes too steep for a person to weed or climb up very high into trees, from which it can travel from treetop to treetop. The abundant flowers turn into abundant seeds with a high germination rate. The weak stems break easily and root at their nodes easily.

Unlike the wild cucumber in Topanga, which climbs and flowers scantily, dies back when the summer arrives and does no damage therefore to the shrubs it climbed over, the Cape Ivy totally smothers all shrubs and trees it climbs over, leaving dead brush, which adds another fire menace.

I hope all my Topanga neighbors will look for this plant in their neighborhood and eliminate it before we lose more native plants.

FLORENCE NISHIDA

Topanga

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