An "escaped houseplant" is marching through central Colorado, strangling trees, bushes and anything else that cannot escape its voracious vines.
Known as clematis orientalis, the Oriental member of the buttercup family produces an attractive yellow flower in early summer. But by late September, when it reaches its seeding stage, it takes on the appearance of big cotton balls dotting the hillsides and trees along Interstate 70.The plant is especially dominant along the highway corridor from Floyd Hill to Silver Plume.
"We start getting calls on it every year at this time, when it gets that white stuff," said Carl Sorrentino of the highway department. "Apparently we don't know how to control it. We don't know what to do about it."
Buddie Mees knows what to do. She kills it, every chance she gets, and she urges friends to do like-wise.
"If everyone could cut it out of just one tree, that would be a good start," says Mees, who operates the Sugar Plum restaurant in Idaho Springs.
Robert Cox, a horticulturist with the Colorado State University extension office in Jefferson County, said the Oriental strain runs through trees and covers them like a tent, which intercepts the sunshine and weakens them, making them susceptible to disease.
Cox thinks clematis was introduced to the area by miners more than a century ago.
"The early miners brought it here as an ornamental plant, and it escaped," he said.