This part of my series on invasive species in Florida. Also check out my articles on Brazilian pepper and Chinese tallow if you want more information on them.
Caesar weed, also called Congo Jute, has been a cash crop in both Asia and Africa for hundreds of years. Its fibers have been used for many generations to create rope and cloth. It’s a small bush that can grow as high as 10 feet tall. The scientific name is Urena lobata. It belongs to the Malvaceae plant family, a wide ranging family that includes cotton, cacao, hibiscus and okra.
In Florida caesar weed is considered to be a noxious, invasive weed. But that’s not the case around the world. In Asia it’s still processed to make fibers for rope and rough, burlap type cloth. Here’s a video of the harvesting and processing of jute. The species isn’t the exact one we have in Florida, but it’s close in both appearance and uses.
Nobody is sure how caesar weed ended up in Florida. It’s possible that it came from Jamaica. After England outlawed the slave trade in 1830 they brought Indian indentured servants to Jamaica to work the sugar cane. Between 1845 and 1917 about 36,000 laborers moved from India to Jamaica. The plant probably came with these workers. By 1895 it was being grown in Florida for its fiber.
But a funny thing happened on the way to making a profitable Florida industry. In 1936 Wallace H. Carothers, a chemist for Du Pont, invented nylon. Nylon ropes captured much of the market within a few years. Nylon doesn’t deteriorate due to sun and moisture like jute. It’s cheaper and stronger than jute. It’s easier to automate production so when World War II came it was easier to ramp up production of nylon rope than to plant more of a crop that wouldn’t mature for years.
So nylon replaced jute for most fiber products. And what became of the crops across Florida? They escaped cultivation and spread to wild areas across the state. Its sticky seedpods are carried by humans and animals alike to new areas. It can form dense thickets, outcompeting native plants and altering ecological community diversity and function. Here’s a video from University of Florida talking about how aggressive it is.
According to the Florida Plant Atlas caesar weed has spread to almost all counties in the peninsula. The vouchered designation just means that somebody has collected and pressed a leaf from a plant and deposited in a herbarium, and is intended to be a permanent record supporting research purposes. So it could be elsewhere.
But it does have some redeeming qualities. Caesar weed has been used as erosion control on disturbed land. It creates a large and complex root system quickly that will hold dirt in rains. It creates a thicket that gives hiding places for many animals. The blossoms produce nectar for insect pollinators. The root can be boiled and used as a skin cream. And twine from it is still available for sale.
Control of caesar weed can be done either manually (chopping and burning) or chemically. A quick internet search will give you the recommended chemicals.
Overall caesar weed is an invasive plant that at times outcompetes native plants. But that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. It doesn’t normally form the dense thickets of Brazilian pepper nor does it grow well in forested areas like Chinese tallow. For that reason it shouldn’t be thought of in the same category as the other 2.
I write these pieces to organize my thoughts around a subject. In this case I came away thinking that caesar weed isn’t something we should be glad we now have in Florida, but we should also recognize the value it provides the environment as well as its costs. And that value probably comes close to equaling the costs it brings.