I have this odd kind of admiration for the truly terrible invasive species. "Invasives" turn all of the things that make human activities hostile to nature into their advantages. There is something delightfully subversive about it.
Although, I still study them in hopes of protecting the wild diversity that they can destroy. When you dig into some of the things they have done to be successful a little awe is only natural.
A fact that isn't directly related, but that I think about often is how people who are *serious* about growing orchids use foam as substrate. Orchids are hard to raise from seed. The seeds are tiny and the operation is more like chemistry than gardening. Of course, at first, everyone always used cork bark to germinate: that is what they grow on in the wild.
But someone figured out that styrofoam peanuts work better. That's how most are started. They add the moss later for cosmetics.
It's amusing to me that literal "hot house orchids" rejected the cork and thrive on a junk material that causes all kinds of problems (like micro plastics in the ocean.)
They don't "eat" the styrofoam, sadly, just use it to anchor their roots, and it provides the right balence of moisture for many hard to grow species.
Orchids are very strange plants. They also break a lot of rules.
Orchid fans will often lament this. As, if you have been trying to grow some tricky miniture orchid for years, finding out that you can do it, but it's gotta be sitting on a pink foam peanut is ... kind of disappointing.
It's not as romantic as having it on a little slab of cork.
But sourcing cork at least expensive.* And you can find the peanuts in the trash.
*I think my previous comment about it not being sustainable wasn't correct.
It's a whole rabbit-hole. I thank my cat, Pica for getting me on to other hobbies. But... yeah there is something about tiny baby orchids and getting them to take that's intoxicating.
Pica thought so too. She ate my bulbophyllums!!
I kind of hope if I can really understand them I might stand a better chance of finding a way to ... negotiate a truce.
... yeah ...
I'm currently listening to an audio version of *The Voyage of the Beagle*, which refers many times to attempts, successful and unsuccessful to introduce European organisms to other places.
The invasive, the strugglers, and the failures.
And also thinking of the "refugees", forced from their traditional habitats by anthropogenic climate change.
It rankles me that research money for arthropods is only focused on getting rid of them so much of the time. But, I still like the research, often the things learned apply more widely.
@futurebird
There's a book that touches on this: "Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution".
It advocates the idea of cities being new ecosystems, where cosmopolitan life forms make a home. Because a city while hostile to nature in some ways can also be a great host to it.
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