Posts Tagged → multiflora rose
May 15th, 2016
Invasives present a challenge to sustainability because they quickly fill gaps where natives take longer to grow and thrive. Natives evolved in their environment over long periods of time and they perform certain key services and functions that are necessary for the overall system to function properly.
As non-native invasives proliferate, they choke out the natives and reduce their ecosystem services. Almost always, the non-native invasives perform limited or no services, despite showy appearances. Their presence is totally unsustainable and is ruinous if left unchecked.
A day or so ago while walking on my favorite rail-trail, it was impossible to ignore the sickly sweet smell of Japanese honeysuckle, a huge invasive nearly everywhere in Pennsylvania. For whatever reason, Japanese honeysuckle has spread like wildlfire in the past few years. My only neighbor’s property is like Ground Zero, so whatever fight I am carrying on at my place is limited in effect by the invasive sanctuary across the boundary line. Like a shrub explosion.
Sure, the ruby throated hummingbirds benefit from honeysuckle, and who doesn’t like watching the gentle, delicate little birds flit around?
But this much honeysuckle is quickly crowding out native trees that benefit our native wildlife. Occasionally deer will browse the tender tips of a honeysuckle shrub, but after the first inch it’s just tough woody debris that deer won’t eat. So it grows pretty much unchallenged. And boy does it ever grow!
Along with Japanese honeysuckle comes barberry, multiflora rose, and autumn or Russian olive, often all popping up unannounced in large clumps. Interesting, isn’t it, that they all appear together? Once in a while a nasty ailanthus (“Tree of Heaven”) will push its way in among the other invaders.
After years of battling these non-native invasives, I have come to rely on pulling up the barberry by hand, usually with the aid of a length of re-bar, and spraying the smaller olives, honeysuckle, and multiflora rose with glyphosate. Sawing substantially into the larger honeysuckle shrubs and spraying the cut with glyphosate usually does the trick; it works much better than trying to spray the whole big shrub.
Intriguing, don’t you think, that the biggest advocates of fighting non-native invasives are the ones most aggressively pushing non-native invasives in the form of lawbreaking illegal border crashers?
Recently I was on the West Coast, in an area in the grip of a Biblical-size drought. Water scarcity is becoming a serious problem. Public demand for water far outstrips supply. A drive through the Central Valley revealed apocryphal “Dustbowl” conditions, with signs everywhere warning about the consequences of poor water management.
It is not a sustainable situation. Yet this area also holds the greatest number of illegal invaders in America, who put an unsustainable demand on other public services besides water. Public transportation, public schools, roads, highways, sewage treatment, public spaces like parks, police, fire and hospital services are all stretched way beyond capacity by the presence of the non-native, non-tax-paying invasives.
And yet the voting citizens of Los Angeles and California continue to aggressively vote for unsustainability.
Boggles the mind.
By Josh • Posted in
Immigration •
No Comment
August 18th, 2014
It is a fact that forest owners and land managers are increasingly engaged in a gunfight of sorts with noxious invasive weeds. Ailanthus, mile-a-minute, multiflora rose, barberry, Japanese honeysuckle, Russian olive, Asian bittersweet, Angelica, and new non-native invasives are in many ways taking over and altering Pennsylvania’s native forest.
If you think this sounds like a bunch of environmental hooey, then stop using paper goods right now. No more toilet paper for you!
Paper is a product of pulp trees like black birch and red maple. Once upon a time, these two aforementioned tree species were the scourge of well managed forests. With little seed to feed wildlife, and little valuable wood to make furniture or flooring, these trees displaced the oaks, hickories, hard maples, poplars and cherries landowners have historically relied on to pay for their land and which consumers have relied upon for everything wooden they take for granted.
Now, the formerly “junk” trees we waged war against seem positively benign when compared to the newcomers. Foreign invasive weeds and trees not only bring nothing of nutritional value, nor anything of economic value, they rapidly displace those native trees we rely upon to feed deer, turkeys, bears, and on which America depends for furniture.
Herbicides like Glyphosate 41 have worked for me for many years. But I am now finding myself running around playing catch up with these pesty plants in too many places, more than anyone can keep up with. Like many others in my role, I feel like I am losing the battle. When I see yet another thicket of ailanthus and mile-a-minute, I feel like the guy who showed up at the gunfight with a knife – outgunned, helpless.
It is time to trot out the goats.
Goats eat pretty much everything, including the invasive plants we abhor, with relish. Goats are not cheap initially, but a $100 goat can earn its keep in displaced herbicide expenses in about three or four days.
Goats take more time to maintain than a spray pack and wand. At night they must be penned up, or they will be eaten by a bear or coyotes. They must be tethered in one place and then moved every few hours, or they can quickly damage the native trees and shrubs we want.
The big benefit of goats is that they can be eaten at the end of the project.
I will report back to you on the success of the goats at the gunfight.
August 7th, 2014
Invasive plants like Tree of Heaven (ailanthus, a tree with orange seed pods that just seem to pop up around your property), Asian bittersweet (little vines that quickly become Tarzan-big vines), mile-a-minute, Japanese honeysuckle, Russian olive, barberry, multiflora rose, parasitic ornamental grape vines, and so on, are all becoming a huge problem in our forests.
Each of these plants displaces and suppresses native, helpful plants.
Out west, there are entire regions where it is actually illegal to have invasive weeds on your property. If the county conservation staff find those weeds on your land, you can be fined a lot of money. Why would property rights-driven Westerners embrace a law like that? Wouldn’t they pooh-pooh plants?
Because invasive weeds carry a substantial financial cost, people who make their living off the land have a healthy abhorrence of these bad plants. They are so quick to take over the landscape, and provide few to no benefits to people or animals.
Pennsylvania’s native forests are an important source of wildlife habitat, clean air, clean water, scenic beauty, recreation, and income. Yet, our forests are becoming increasingly overrun by non-native invasive plants and trees. Ailanthus is especially egregious. It got its start and continues to spread from public roadsides, where PennDot and the PA Turnpike Commission have failed to control it. The impact of ailanthus on our forests is becoming a real cost consideration.
It is time to have a public policy and a public agency work more seriously on the challenge posed by invasive weeds.