Miscanthus sinensis

What's out of place in this image?

It's not hard to spot, as an invasive plant, along Interstate 26 from Greenville, SC to Asheville, NC and up the Blue Ridge Escarpment on Highway 25.  It's colonized the roadsides along those thoroughfares and is now moving out to disturbed old field habitat beyond.

It's a colonizer, to be sure.  My gardening companion and I saw it in Northern Vietnam, where it's native, flourishing on disturbed slopes.

Supposedly, our plants in the Garden were sterile cultivars, but here are a couple of plants that have become established in the powerline corridor.

So, we're still planting it as an 'ornamental grass' -- hmm, what's out of place here?

A footnote:  River Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) is an equally prolific (reproductively speaking) grass in our area.  Plant it in your landscape at your peril.  Other native grasses will also abundantly set seed (Indian Grass comes to mind), but that's what plants often do, to be fair!