Invasive plants: now is the time to fight back

A walk along our country roads is not what it used to be. Instead of a diversity of plants along our way, we are often faced with a wall of vines and a monoculture of shrubs. We all know that these are invasive plants and we have seen exhibits, read articles and maybe attended lectures on the issue. Taking action to address the situation is another story.There is a long list of problem plants and that may be a problem in itself. It seems to me that it’s kind of like learning bird songs — there are so many that some people get overwhelmed and scared off. When teaching classes about bird songs we usually concentrate on a small subset of birds and build from there. This way, people learn gradually and enjoy the process.Many of the invasive plants we are now plagued with were actually planted as ornamentals for gardens, for erosion control or for privacy shields decades ago at the recommendation of horticulturalists and wildlife agencies. I have several pamphlets in my office from the 1960s and 1970s that recommend things like autumn olive, honeysuckle and Japanese barberry for their wildlife and soil stabilization value. We now know that these nonnative plants are extremely invasive, spread rapidly and take over native vegetation at an alarming rate.The offspring from these original plantings are largely what we see invading our roadways, hedgerows and backyards and they are making their way deeper and deeper into our forests. By becoming aware of what you have in your backyard and removing the invasive plants, you can help stop their spread. Of course identifying the 96 plants listed as invasive by the Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group can be as overwhelming as learning bird songs — unless we focus on a suite of plants that would make a huge difference if kept at bay. Here are my top three: oriental bittersweet, a vine that eventually kills mature trees by choking them to death (so to speak); common barberry, a thorny shrub that provides a safe haven for mice that host deer ticks; and multiflora rose, an even thornier shrub with a nice white flower that is its only redeeming quality.Helping to abate these three plants will make a huge difference. There are many websites that have photos and describe appropriate control methods. I am not a fan of herbicides, so I prefer mechanical means of control: Dig them out! Sometimes this isn’t possible, especially in the case of large bittersweet vines that will simply resprout if cut. Cutting the vine and painting the stump with only the required amount of herbicide does the trick.The more we can reduce these three easily identifiable plants from our own yards, the closer we will come to slowing their spread. I am happy to help with identification, and more information can be found at the Connecticut Invasive Plant Working Group website, www.hort.uconn.edu/cipwg. Scott Heth is the director of Audubon Sharon and can be reached at sheth@audubon.org, (subject line: Nature Notes).