Purple loosestrife, Lythrum salicaria, is easily seen when in bloom from mid-summer into fall. More obscure until then, plants propagate from seed, most likely dropped by birds. The thick roots quickly take hold and fill pond surface. Some biologists observed that migrating ducks avoid ponds where loosestrife prevails.

Chemical control of loosestrife has been ineffective. A beetle (Galerucella calmarienses), successful on trial areas for 15 years, is being tried throughout the United States. Thousands of beetles, collected by refuge staff and MEECe volunteers, were released on McNary NWR in the summer of 1998. Several years are expected to pass before the effects of this biological control are known.

This plant was brought in from Europe as a favorite flower garden perennial attractive to humming birds and butterflies. A fifty-year-old textbook indicates that the attractive flowers do not survive picking and further states the interesting, inconspicuous plant could rarely, if ever, become obnoxious as a weed. What a difference 50 years can make.