Alternanthera philoxeroides
Amaranthaceae
An evil scientist at Palm Beach State College takes over Lake Worth Lagoon with a swarm of aquadroids made with a combination of stingray, gator, and manatee DNA. They pierce flesh, they bite with gusto, they graze on seagrass. Far-fetched you say? Maybe so to blinkered animal-o-centrists, but reality in the heartless world of green. Fear Alligator Weed smothering the water from Florida to China, one canal at a time. Resembling the Lake Worth Lagoon Stinging-Gator, Alligator Weed is a deadly combo of three species, hybridized long ago and far away. It retains the DNA of all three ancestors, three sets of paired chromosomes.
The green Frankenstein is well armed for aquatic conquest with rafts of floating hollow stems, dangling root tangles mopping up nutrients from the fertilizer-polluted waters, and regrowth from broken fragments.
That regrowth matters a lot. If you have the DNA from three different species packed into one individual, how ever are you going to reproduce? Those eggs and sperms just won’t be right. Guess what, throughout its global conquest, Alligator Weed is unknown to make seeds. Kinda ironic-eh? One of the world’s most aggressive reproducers is sterile. But blast it with a neutron laser destructo-beam (or a string trimmer) and where you had one you now have 100.
If you want to dominate the Earth you must adjust as you go: climate differences & stuff. With that in mind, check out this USDA article about Alligator Weed taking hold in California.
The plant seems to be evolving (“altering its genetic makeup”) to expand northward. Okay, but isn’t evolving and altering genetic makeup what the birds and bees do? Today’s invader has no birds and bees. And that may be where having DNA from three species shows up. A Swiss Army Knife of DNA. The Lake Worth Lagoon alligator hybrid can sting yer’ ass, chomp yer’ bones, or eat some grass. Maybe the Alligator Weed hybrid has DNA from one ancestor attuned to warmer water while DNA from Ancestor B helps in cooler canals. DNA for every contingency. Or something very very roughly like that. You get the idea.
[Oh yea, and by the way, there are many naturally hybrid plants that do make seeds, and don’t aspire to take over the world….it’s just that AW is an extreme and fun case.]
Grasses: http://www.floridagrassesandsedges.net
John Bradford
George Rogers
George Rogers
Dee Staley
Treasure Coast Natives 