Madam Editor,
Recently I took a day trip to New Toulouse Bayou, for reasons of Sightseeing and certainly having nothing to do with illicit hooch distilleries, and I was shocked to discover the presence of an Alien Invasion right here in our own Parish.
These invaders are as beautiful as they are dangerous. I am speaking, of course, of Eichhornia crassipes, the water hyacinth.
A single plant can produce five thousand seeds and cover an acre in one growing season. A woman brought one home to Florida from the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition of 1884, and when it overran her fishpond, she put the extra hyacinths at her boat landing. Would you like to know how many miles of the river soon became impossible to navigate by steamboat? Two hundred miles, that’s how many.
If these prolific plants were to spread from Bayou to the Missedabracket River, that great muddy road of Commerce, our entire Parish would suffer. I have heard that a local grocery handed out free water hyacinths as a promotion. We need a concerted effort to eradicate this picturesque menace, not to encourage it in the name of selling more washing-powder.
Scientifically yours,
B. Robicheaux