Cape May 4

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Extravagance has its price. Thoreau knew it. A monoculture—one plant dominating one environ—is not healthy; nature prefers a balance: a yin, yang.

Tall—up to ten feet—and leggy with billowy, plume-like flower heads, phragmites, a.k.a. common reed grass, is eye-catching. Swaying in the morning sun, it shimmers, softening the roadside ditches and low-lying moist places, but looks can be deceiving. To serve up a cliché like a leftover quiche, "all that shimmers is not gold."

Now found worldwide, the statuesque wetland grass is of little value to wildlife. Spreading not by seeds but by underground creeping rhizomes, it creates such a thick canopy that smaller native plants cannot survive in its shade. It's become the invasive kudzu of the coastal northeast.

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