“Battling invasives is like fighting crime: you can never let your guard down”

Something I always look forward to getting in my interoffice mailbox: the latest issue of Audubon Magazine.  There’s always a thoughtful and interesting piece, like the “As Ugly as a Tree” article in last September’s issue (unfortunately not archived online) about how just planting trees isn’t a solution to all our problems–only by planting the right tree in the right place are we doing good instead of harm. 

This month’s issue features an article by a backyard gardener whose revelation that many of the plants in his yard are non-native sends him into battle with invasive plants.  Check it out here.  The story mentions several of the plants we deal with in our parks, including porcelain berry vine, tree of heaven, and Japanese honeysuckle.  Although we may think that just planting an exotic plant in our yards won’t do any harm, it only takes a flock of birds feasting on the fruits of a backyard porcelain berry to fly into a park and spread the seed.  The vine then has free rein to grow in the forest and choke the trees, claiming what could be a diverse habitat for itself. 

I remember last summer during a Parks Conservancy volunteer day, I was working for a long time with a partner to remove a porcelain berry vine from a very young native tree.  When we uncoiled the vine, the indentations it had left in the bark were massive.  I can only hope that we got to it in time, before the vine had tightened itself so securely that the tree became unable to convey water and nutrients from roots to leaves.

All this to say…what we do at home has an impact in our natural areas too.  While it may look like porcelain berry vine makes the birds happy today, if such plants spread uncontrolled the birds will have far fewer dining options in the future. 

If you’d like to know what plants are considered invasive in Pennsylvania and how you can help control them, click here.