Purple loosestrife can still be bought as a garden plant.  That it has escaped is no surprise to me at all.  The anti-purple loosestrife bandwagon has been jumped on by many people, mostly biologists who see a new project with potential government funding.  An interesting article was sent to a scientific journal, written by two undergraduate ecology students, that questioned the approach used by most people to eradicate loosestrife, in particular the haste to import exotic inesects (Galerucella beetles) to 'control' it.  The article received tremendous support from the receiving editor, who sent it for peer review.  The reviewers, who work in the field of loosestrife eradication, roundly denounced it because it attacked the validity (and in the editor's opinion with good reason) of their work and goverment funding for their work.  Needless to say it could not be published (scientific freedom you say?) and has not been.  I have seen loosestrife in many wetlands, and I have yet to see it completely take over any wetland.  It has its margin of habitat requirements, and in all the places I have seen it it has mixed with the native flora.  No one has yet, to my knowledge, shown using scientific studies that it is really causing large scale harm, something I would think is a prerequisite to importing exotic plant-eating beetles to eradicate it!

I participated in a loosestrife project at the University of Guelph that looked at how the plant can propagate.  Basically any section of the plant that has a node (the point where leaves or roots grow from) can grow into a new plant.  If you rip it out, you break off many nodes - many new plants can grow.  You must remove the entire thing - simply pulling it will not do the job unless you go back over and over to keep pulling what you left behind.  In that case your trampling in the marsh is probably doing more damage to the native flora than the loosestrife was.

My two bits' worth

Martin Damus