AUGUSTA — Water spinach sounds like something Popeye would appreciate. But Gov. Paul LePage has a different take on the vegetable.

A tasty green that’s long been a staple in Southeast Asia and Brazil, water spinach is listed as a federal noxious weed under the U.S. Plant Protection Act.

As one of 112 federally recognized noxious plants, growing, importing or transporting water spinach requires a federal permit that’s not always easy to come by.

So when Joe and Phuong Gannon of South Berwick, a town a little north of Kittery, came up with a plan to cultivate it year-round in “heated aquaponic grow troughs in insulated greenhouses” they sought to ensure the state would back their idea.

The Legislature obliged, unanimously approving an emergency bill  that would prohibit the state from objecting to the issuance of a federal permit as long as the project met federal guidelines and standards for handling the plants.

But Gov. Paul LePage took a stand in opposition, vetoing the measure Tuesday.
LePage said Maine has asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deny water spinach permits for years because the state has “aquatic weed problems” already.

“This problem has become very expensive to combat and is affecting our valuable natural resources,” he said in his veto message.

He said he has no problem with state regulators working with people on permit issues “but it is not right to mandate in statute that the department take a position on a permit when it may not be in the best interest of all Mainers.”

Gary Fish, the state horticulturist at the Division of Animal and Plant Health in the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, told legislators the risks of allowing water spinach cultivation in Maine outweigh the benefits.

He said Maine “has a very strong legislatively mandated program to prevent the introduction and spread of invasive aquatic plants” that’s been in place since 2002 and has shelled out more than $9.5 million so far to combat the problem.

Fish also said there’s only been one request to grow water spinach in the state.
Gannon’s plan may still have a shot, though.

The University of Massachusetts’ Vegetable Team, which helps encourage farmers to try to grow a variety of new crops, secured approval for growing water spinach in the Connecticut River valley because the plant “is frost sensitive and so not invasive in Massachusetts.”

Joe Gannon told lawmakers that water spinach doesn’t survive in wintry locales such as South Berwick, which has frost well over half the year.

Adding some further evidence that it may not pose a risk is that so far water spinach is a problem in four states: Florida, Texas, California and Hawaii, all of them far warmer than New England.

Fish said that when water spinach, a sort of creeping vine in the morning glory family, was introduced from China into Florida in 1979 it soon created “dense mats in waterways and irrigation ditches,” growing as much as 4 inches daily.

Gannon said that water spinach is widely available in restaurants and markets that cater to Asians, but its quality in Maine is “suspect.”

“The plant is very perishable,” he said, and needs to be chilled to about 50 degrees soon after harvest.

“Plants with younger, tender stalks and little branching are more prized than what is typically imported from other states, which have thicker, tougher stalks” that are less tasty, Gannon said. They are also costly in the fall and winter, he said.

If his project moves ahead, Gannon said, he and his wife hope to sell to Maine’s ethnic restaurants and some markets.