These are our biggest enemies at our house in Western Massachusetts. I wrote this up to share with my family:
The reason we care about these in particular is that they do the most damage to the native plants that feed the birds, primarily because insects will eat native species and leave these alone to proliferate. They don’t serve as a food source (birds eat insects for their most important nutrition–especially during breeding season and prior to migration) and these plants reproduce thousands and thousands of seeds for each plant so letting them hang out does damage to the micro-ecosystem of our property.
It’s always best to pull the whole plant but sometimes the buckthorn or oriental bittersweet are too old then we just cut them through at the base with a sharp knife the best we can.
We do not use manufactured chemicals for anything and it’s especially important that we don’t because we have wetlands (Round Up/Glyphosate/triclopyr kills frogs and snakes, for starters.)
So hand-to-hand combat it is.
Know your jerks:
Glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus): usually seen without berries. These are primarily along the perimeter of the front yard and along the driveway. They do show up in the shadier garden beds. The buckthorn produces fewer seeds than the others, but they are still the pits because birds do eat those berries and then strategically poop them everywhere.
Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata): Literally everywhere. Highest priority is in garden beds and around the house where we have to look at them. They appear without flowers the first year and then set approximately a gazillion seeds on year two. When the flowers set seed they look like little gnarled knots–not like pretty flowers. They are very easy to pull.
Lady’s Thumbprint (Polygonum persicaria): Everywhere. Same priority as the garlic mustard; they are most annoying in native beds. They’d be cute if they stayed where they were put, I’d even plant them intentionally but they have zero chill and no self control. They’re in bloom now. Like the garlic mustard, they are pretty easy to pull.
Oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus): There is a native bitter sweet that has exclusively red berries. The oriental bittersweet, the invasive, is distinguished by the presence of yellow berries in addition to the red ones. I don’t think we even have any of the native ones so it’s a moot point. These are the worst of our enemies because they slowly strangle trees to death and grow up to 70′. They are located primarily along the perimeter of the yard where the grass meets the tree line and along the driveway. If they are young you can pull them up with some effort, otherwise they can be cut to the ground. If you pull one and the roots are orange/rust colored, you have definitely found oriental bittersweet.
If there are berries they have to go into the actual garbage, not the compost. The seeds survive for ages and it will just create more of itself if left lying around. People used to use them for Christmas decorations.
Turns out that was a mistake!
Burning bush (Euonymus alatus): Like the buckthorn these are around the perimeter of the yard and the driveway. They are still sold in Massachusetts and you see them everywhere in people’s yards on this street so it’s unlikely they will be disappearing anytime soon. We had one in the front of the house in the main landscaping when we moved in and I loved it because the fall colors are gorgeous and I didn’t know how it invasive it is. It has since been replaced.
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