Invasive Gardening

As kids we all heard the story of Johnny Chapman also known as Johnny apple seed. The legend that has been made up about his is mostly untrue, but it was a terrific legend. In reality he was a nursery man that was fond of barter and the people in the mid west loved him because he brought to them the possibility of making home made alcohol.

Some thirty odd years ago my brother had a fascination with sun flowers. He’d grow them and harvest the seeds. Amazing was how each seed looked totally different from the next. It was as though they had a unique bar coding system.

Eventually we got to the point where we thought it would be a lot of fun to plant sunflowers every where we went. Any open to the public planter or decorative flower garden got seeded. Most got weeded out, but some grew in gardens that were untended.

We were delighted to see them growing in a small bed outside the gate house of a county park. There were other places where they sprouted along roadsides, but we never got the results we were after which was a sun flower infestation in our home town.

I wonder if any of those roadside plants survive today or if all the seeds were poisoned or eaten by birds and chip monks. If any of you are ever in Northern New Jersey and see a sun flower growing in an odd place, please let me know.