Last June, Ken Hughes, president of the Board of Aldermen and a landscaper with a concern for the environment, released 1,000 of the Galerucella beetles as an experiment to combat purple loosestrife, a fast spreading weed that obstructs native flowers and grasses.

Hughes returned to the site last week only to discover that the voracious beetles had multiplied, spreading a half-mile from where they were first introduced.

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By eating the leaves, the beetles were interrupting the photosynthesis process of the plants, thus eventually killing them, Hughes explained.

Meanwhile, the leaves of the native plants near the purple loosestrife were untouched, which is the advantage of using the beetle to control the unwanted vegetation according to Hughes ?EUR??,,????'?????<

Purple loosestrife was brought from Europe more than 200 years ago by gardeners homesick for their former landscapes, birds do not eat its seed or use its leaves to build nests, therefore it thrives naturally.

In the 1980s, researchers working in Europe discovered the Galerucella beetle living in the plant, were a natural predator. The beetle was then brought to the U.S. and more than 40 states have since released it, Connecticut first doing so in 1996.