As I was browsing through Bloomberg’s news and found this rather uncharacteristic story in the feed. It’s a good read 🙂
It isn’t just hedge funds troubling fund capital Greenwich, Connecticut. It’s hedges.
A fast-growing vine known as mile-a-minute weed, or the kudzu of the North, is stalking hedges, shrubs and trees in the town 27 miles (43 kilometers) north of New York City that is home to 60 fund companies. The plant advances as much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) a day and has a grip on National Audubon Society land and other patches, said Denise Savageau, Greenwich’s conservation director.
“Remember ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’” said Tom Baptist, executive director of Audubon Connecticut, who found the creeping interloper at the group’s Gimbel Sanctuary in 1996. “This has a similar science fiction feeling, but it’s the attack of an alien plant. It usually kills what it covers.”
That threatens millions of dollars of damage to Connecticut orchards, farms, gardens and landscaping, said Todd Mervosh, a state weed scientist and member of the Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group. The state produced $14 million of apples, peaches and pears last year, and $3.8 million of Christmas trees in 2007, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data.
Like all stories about hedges, this one has an unlikely hero!
Calling on Weevils
On the hedge front, state experts are planning their most aggressive assault yet. Early next month, they will release 3,000 vine-eating weevils in Greenwich, Newtown and North Haven. The insect larvae bore in the stem and kill the plant, said the University of Connecticut’s Ellis, co-chairman of the state’s invasive plant working group.
The weevils have been used with success in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia, she said.
“We need to fight and fight hard,” Ellis said. “This is the enemy of the year.”
Click here for the full story!
