Orange hawkweed, a menacing invasive plant, is spreading in Anchorage

Update: Several readers reached out asking how they can responsibly remove hawkweed from their property. This story has been updated with information about what experts recommend.

That cluster of flame-orange, dandelion-like flowers you saw blooming somewhere in Anchorage? Those are no benevolent wildflowers.

That’s orange hawkweed, an invasive weed experts say is one of the most difficult to control. The plant has the ability to take over lawns, wildflower meadows and other vegetation, and some attempts at eradication only stoke its growth.

In Alaska, orange hawkweed, along with other notorious invasive plant scoundrels such as purple loosestrife, quackgrass and sow thistle, is considered a prohibited noxious weed. That means it falls under the highest level of restriction, and is illegal to buy, sell or transport.

This summer, there seems to be a bumper crop of orange hawkweed sprouting in Anchorage. People are talking about it, said Anne Billman, a member of the board of the Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation District.

“It’s hard to know whether people are seeing it more because they’re aware of it now, or if it’s actually exploding,” Billman said.

Patches of orange hawkweed have been established all over Anchorage, including swaths around Lake Hood — an area of special concern because floatplanes could carry traces of the plant to remote areas of Alaska, Billman said.

Over the last three years, people have noticed orange hawkweed creeping in patches through city parks as well as in Chugach State Park, said Graziano, “near or even off trails.”

This summer, the Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation District has placed signs at trailheads including Glen Alps, Prospect Heights, Basher and Upper Huffman with information about the plant and a QR code for people to report sightings, including coordinates of where the plant was found, according to Billman. The idea, Billman said, is that hikers can share where they see the plant, helping alert monitors to problem areas for possible eradication.

So far this summer Billman said she’d received about six reports from the Chugach State Park area. She expects more as people learn to recognize the plant.

The group has focused efforts on the Basher trailhead area because it’s a neighborhood surrounded by wild land and a prime place for orange hawkweed to spread into the wilderness, Billman said.

Orange hawkweed, with distinctive reddish-orange flowers and hairy stem, was introduced to Alaska as an ornamental flower around 50 years ago, said Gino Graziano, an invasive plants instructor with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service. The distinctive orange or red flowers aren’t visually similar to any native wildflowers. The seed heads of orange hawkweed can resemble dandelion tufts.

“What people didn’t realize is that it spreads really easily and aggressively,” he said.

Back then, people even used to sell it — longtime Daily News gardening columnist Jeff Lowenfels remembers seeing it for sale not long after he arrived in Alaska in the 1970s.

“I came up here and there was a log cabin in Mountain View, and the guy there was selling this beautiful flower,” he said. “I had never seen anything like it.”

It is now understood that orange hawkweed poses serious ecological risks, due to its many methods of reproducing and a viciously stubborn way of clinging to the soil and resisting removal, he said.

Once orange hawkweed gets into wild land, it can turn a diverse wildflower meadow into a monoculture and “all the bad things that are associated with losing diversity, both above ground and in the soil,” Lowenfels said.

And while some people find it beautiful, it’s nothing but trouble to Alaska ecosystems, he said.

If you want to remove orange hawkweed from your property, experts say to proceed cautiously: Pulling or mowing are not recommended unless you are dealing with just one or two plants, because they can leave small root fragments that lead to new hawkweed plants to flourish, according to the UAF Cooperative Extension Service.

A weed barrier fabric that leaves at least enough fabric to cover one foot past the edge of the infestation can work for smaller infestations, but the fabric must stay on for years to be effective, the cooperative extension says.

Herbacides are used for larger areas, according to the cooperative extension service — including at Lake Hood, where hawkweed has been treated for years in an effort to stem or slow the spread of the plant, said Tom Johnston, the environmental program manager at Ted Stevens International Airport.