Hmmm. If that isn’t a great name for a cheesy sci-fi movie, well, I don’t know what is. It definitely brings up images of alien plants with long green tentacles dripping with a green glow-in-the dark substance that turns everything that tries to get in its way into slime! Does that sound pretty far-fetched to you? Well, it’s closer to reality that you might think. And if you are a plant living in a wetland in the US… Be afraid, be very, very afraid. The Phragmites are coming! In fact, they are already here.

Right, well since you’re not a marsh plant, you’re probably not packing up a portable supply of swamp water just yet, but what are Phragmites, and how are they threatening the lives of marsh plants? Phragmites australis is one of the most invasive plants ever to hit North American waterways. It is sometimes known by the alias “common reed.”  It is an alien. Not to the planet, but to the continent of North America. Its real home is in Asia, but it’s not content to stay there.

And this is one nasty alien. It likes to “whack off” its neighbors with its secret weapon, an acid that is so strong that it turns the roots of the plants around it to mush. And it’s fast; in less than half an hour we’re talking total pudding here. These alien plants have a plan, and it is no less that total, complete world domination. One of its favorite landing pads is the state of Delaware, where it has taken over tens of thousands of acres of wetlands.

Of course, scientists are on the alert. In a secret lab (so secret we can’t reveal its location even to our mothers), they are busy creating an antidote. So far they’ve had success in the lab, but until they can fight Phragmites in the wild, marsh plants will still be shaking in their mud for some time to come.