I found the following quote the other day in a 1924 edition of "The Book of Wild Flowers". It is remarkable that this plant has been spreading for >70 years and is just now eliciting a response like we are seeing. I think beekeepers have little to worry about this plant being damaged by pests that feed on it in Europe. The threat to native species by the insects may end up being a problem however. Since they have been released in Canada it is probably only a matter of time until they spread here anyway. Colonization of new species is a natural phenomenon and we will have to live with the consequences of it regardless if it is a plant or insect or if it gets here on its own or is given a lift by man. We can make a best guess what the outcome will be, but only time will tell. From "The Book of Wild Flowers", The National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, 1924 An immigrant from Europe, loving wet meadows, marshy places, and banks of streams, and flowering from June to August, the purple loosestrife has secured a foothold in North America and thrives from eastern Canada to Delaware and from the Atlantic seaboard to the Middle States. So beautiful is it that many are ready to forgive Europe for all the weeds it has sent us, when they see an inland marsh in August aglow with this beautiful flower born to the royal purple. The purple loosestrife is different from any other heretofore mentioned, because it has what are known as trimorphic flowers. Being unable to set seed without the aid of insects, the purple loosestrife has devised a most ingenious sort of arrangement to make sure that it shall not pass away until its flowers have been fertilized. This plant produces six different kinds of yellow and green pollen on its two sets of three stamens; these six different kinds of pollen are deposited on the stigmas, which are of three different lengths. Darwin showed that only pollen brought from the shortest stamen to the shortest pistil and from the other stamens to the pistils of corresponding length could effectively fertilize the flower. He found that the reproductive organs, when of different length, behaved toward one another like different species of the same genus, both with regard to direct productiveness and in the character of the offspring. When he made his famous discovery concerning trimorphism of the loosestrife, he wrote to Gray, the botanist: "I am almost stark, staring mad over Lythrum;... for the love of heaven have a look at some of your species, and if you can get me some seeds, do." David Winkler