Call in the wee black weevils! An army of them is being used to fight a problem in Greenwich. Scientists are releasing the insects to get rid of the fast-growing invasive week known as the "mile-a-minute vine." The plant grows 6 inches per day and blankets shrubs, hedges and trees.
“It’s like a wall of green in some places,” Donna Ellis, a scientist at the University of Connecticut who is also a member of the state’s Invasive Plant Working Group, told Bloomberg.com. “We could double the number of weevils next year.”
Scientists plan to unleash 7,000 of the little weevils in five towns. Fairfield County, which includes Greenwich, will be the focus of next year’s weevil release because scientists are finding the heaviest concentration of mile-a-minute there.
The fancy name for this vine, which is native to eastern Asia, is Persicaria perfoliata. Officials with Audubon Connecticut say the weed probably was introduced in our state via a load of trees and shrubs trucked to Greenwich Audubon land from Pennsylvania.
So far, the vine has been spotted in five of the state’s eight counties.
“Instead of seeing the trees and the view, the view is just blocked,” Ellis said of an infestation in Quinnipiac River State Park in North Haven after visiting a monitoring site this week.
