By Peter Cleary
No one is sure how it got here, but it came from the distant land of South America and for years it lay in wait.
It seemed innocent enough. People kept it in the yard. They thought it was pretty. They may have even eaten the seeds it spawned.
They did not know.
The scientists called it a "sit and wait predator."
And that's what it did. It sat. It waited. And it waited.
Then this rogue plant, the Brazilian pepper tree, had its opportunity. As settlers cleared land for highways and developments, it quickly infested the open land.
Then it invaded parks and nature preserves such as Boyd Hill.
And thus began the vile campaign of ravaging the near-pristine woodlands of Florida.
Once it started to spread it did not stop. It spread. And it spread. And it spread.
Birds loved the seeds—they made them drunk—and after their bacchanalia of berries, the birds flew away and dropped the seeds in a new area, furthering the domain of this pervasive plant.
No one could stop it as it strangled out the native vegetation. It encroached upon the freedoms of its neighbors, stealing their sun, drinking their water. And it was not a just tree. Some say this tree spat out a poison that killed its neighbors.
Ken Gioeli, a University of Florida natural resources extension agent, studies the plant in search of a way to rid the state of it.
"The lack of natural enemies has enabled this plant to out-compete native vegetation," says Gioeli.
Other plants were eaten or overtaken by disease, and the Brazilian pepper tree grew up in their places.
"It will out-compete all of [the natives] so you will only have two to three species of plants," says Gioeli. This means less for food animals and an altogether unhealthy ecosystem.
The exotic plant was waging a war against beauty.
But it will not go unchallenged.
A select few—they called themselves botanists, they called themselves land managers—knew the plant could be beaten back. These noble voices for nature knew they must fight this invader. One of their battlegrounds is Boyd Hill.
The first skirmishes were failures.
"You can try to stay on top of it the best you can, and the next thing you blink and you've got 50 stands," says Linda Seufert, Boyd Hill Nature Park supervisor.
In return for these failures, they learned a truth. To fully eradicate this alien plant, they needed to attack all of its strongholds in the preserve at once.
So they gathered resources. Money came in from the Pinellas County Environmental Fund, Lowe's and the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Expertise came from the University of Florida.
A year ago, Boyd Hill started a major removal of the Brazilian pepper tree and other exotic species in the park. The campaign is going well, and within the next year Seufert expects to have fully removed the exotics.
The Boyd Hill clean up utilizes a cocktail of methods, which include cutting the trees and applying a herbicide. The goal is to remove the entire Brazilian pepper tree seed bank in the park.
"There's a little bit of strategy involved," says Gioeli. If the park doesn't use the proper technique, the tree may quickly resprout.
The clean up at Boyd Hill is expensive—Seufert estimates the total cost at one million dollars.
The state and its cities and counties can't afford to wage this war on all its lands.
But another man—a man who calls himself an entomologist—said he may have discovered the solution.
He has found a bug, a bug native to the same South American lands that furnished the Brazilian pepper tree.
This bug consumes the Brazilian pepper tree, and, according to the entomologist, associate professor James Cuda of the University of Florida, in Florida it will consume nothing but the Brazilian pepper tree.
Others are not so confident.
Seufert has fears about the bug and thinks that, like other insects in the past, Cuda's bug will adapt to eat other food sources as the supply of Brazilian pepper tree runs out.
While Cuda concedes to past failures in similar campaigns, he argues these failures are not due to the shortcomings of science.
"It is a safe technique, it's very highly regulated," Cuda said. The science behind this bug is robust and thorough. The bug faces many years of risk assessment before it is released. Cuda's bug, a primitive non-stinging wasp called a sawfly, has been studied for 10 years.
Cuda plans to release the bug into the water management district's land this summer, pending permit approval.
If Cuda's right, the sawfly will tame the Brazilian pepper tree, limiting its ability to overtake the native forests.
But if his doubters are right, the legion of alien species will gain strength, increase their stranglehold and further eat into Florida's natural beauty.