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Japanese Stilt Grass, a Prolific Invasive Plant in Connecticut

joenesgarden — Fri, 25 May 2012 23:15:37 +0000

Japanese Stilt Grass, a Prolific Invasive Plant in Connecticut

The transition area between our front lawn and adjacent woods is a 'wild' area filled with woodland grasses, ferns, and mosses – lovely and very low maintenance, until now. Last July I identified Japanese stilt grass in a section about six to eight feet wide and long. Japanese stilt grass is a truly scary invasive that is overtaking roadside edges, drainage culverts, and wooded areas in my neighborhood and elsewhere in Connecticut.

Japanese stilt grass spreads by seeds and possibly resprouts from rootlets not completely removed when pulling the plant.

This is what Japanese stilt grass looks like now, at the end of May on my Connecticut property.

Here it is even closer.

It doesn't appear to be troublesome at first. It looks unassuming in the foreground below.

It's actually a rather attractive low-growing plant that holds a lime-green shade all summer long. But don't be fooled by its mild-mannered look. Left alone it will fill in so thickly that native grasses and other plants will be smothered. In the same area it looked like this last August.

Normally, Japanese stilt grass germinates in June. This year it germinated in May. Normally Japanese stilt grass blooms in August. This year watch for it to begin blooming in July. One plant … one of these thin stalks of greenery … typically produces about 100 seeds. Seeds remain viable for about seven years. Do the math. One stalk can cause 100 more stalks any time during the next seven years.

It has, does, and will spread.

We followed advised control steps: weed whacked it before it began to bloom and let it dry and remain in place. Any raking disturbs underlying soil and brings seeds to the surface to sprout. We left the area alone till Autumn. No new plants showed up. Then we spread wood chips harvested from some of the felled trees on our property.

This year the stilt grass is back, presumably from seeds that must be in the soil. There must have been some in the area in previous years that went unnoticed and seeded. I'm pulling as much of the stilt grass as possible without moving the wood chips aside. I don't plan to let it get as thick as it was last year. Continued pulling will have to continue throughout the growing season.

Pulled plants should be placed in a container and sent away with the trash. Ideally, to be sure the plants are degraded fully, let them sit in a plastic bag in the hot sun for a few days before throwing the bag in the trash. Do not compost Japanese stilt grass. It is not clear that home composting gets hot enough to kill it off. Do not throw Japanese stilt grass into the woods thinking it will die off; it may regrow from rootlets.

If you find this plant in flower beds, do not ignore it. It will quickly become a major problem. Read UConn's Invasive Plant Worksheet for more information.

Garden thoughtfully …

Categories: Gardening, General, Invasives.
Tags: gardening in Connecticut, invasive plants, Japanese stilt grass.

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Now is the Time to Identify and Control Japanese Barberry

joenesgarden — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 02:01:25 +0000

Now is the Time to Identify and Control Japanese Barberry

Connecticut's woodland undergrowth is beginning to green. Unfortunately, much of this color is due to invasive Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii de Candolle). This thorny shrub dominates unmanaged wooded areas. Deer don't eat it and birds spread it by eating and dispersing the prolific red berries it produces each autumn. Japanese barberry quickly grows into large thickets that provide cover for mice and an ideal environment for immature blacklegged ticks - the very ticks that carry Lyme disease. In their early life, ticks are susceptible to desiccation – they need high-humidity at the ground level to thrive. Japanese barberry accommodate the high-humidity needs of young ticks by leafing out earlier than most native shrubbery, thus maintaining ground-level moisture by blocking drying sunshine.

Mice also like the protection a large stand of Japanese barberry affords them from predators. With mice and ticks enjoying the same habitat there's bound to be an increase in tick-borne disease.

Researchers Scott C. Williams and Jeffrey S. Ward, at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven, have been monitoring the number of mice, the number of ticks and Lyme-infected ticks, and ground-level humidity in three geographic areas of Connecticut. In each area they have test plots of uncontrolled, controlled, and no Japanese barberry. They control Japanese barberry in their test plots using one of three methods. One method is torching the base of each shrub until the main stems carbonized and glowed – in effect girdling main stems to stop nutrient transfer. I would not advise trying this method without undergoing a certain level of training, particularly during this dry, high fire risk spring of 2012.

The other two forms of control involved mechanically cutting the shrubs – usually by brush hog – and leaving cut plant material in place. They controlled regrowth with herbicides or flame from a propane torch applied directly to new sprouts. Note: Torching is acceptable control method for organic land care. It involves heating new sprouts by sweeping the flame back and forth over leaves until their cells burst. Torching does not involve turning a large patch of land into a flaming inferno. However, in this dry and high fire risk year, I strongly suggest this type of control only be used by highly trained individuals.

With a total of three years of data now collected, Williams and Ward report plots without barberry have about 30 Lyme-infected ticks per hectare (the equivalent of 2.471 acres). In these controlled plots, the researchers found decreased humidity and 'a near 60% reduction in the number of B. burgdorferi-infected adult blacklegged ticks.'

Plots of uncontrolled Japanese barberry had about 280 Lyme-infected ticks per hectare.

These findings suggest that continued barberry control will result in continued decline in tick populations. Mechanical control takes vigilance and follow-up, as Scott Williams explained for my report on his and Ward's previous Japanese barberry-tick study. Effective eradication requires proper identification of the Japanese barberry shrubs, mechanical removal of all above-ground portions in late-spring or early summer so the shrubs use starchy root reserves to force out new growth, then killing new growth in later summer.

It is extremely important to know that Japanese barberry shrubs will not die with one cut. Williams cautions that cut shrubs send up new growth with a vengeance. If pulled, it will resprout from the tiniest rootlets left in the ground. Re-checking areas where Japanese barberry has been cut or pulled is an extremely important management practice. Eradication requires vigilance.

I live in an area heavily infested with Japanese barberry yet my property is clear of this invader because I wander my property this time of year to attack any Japanese barberry shrub or sprout. I repeat my wanderings during autumn months to be sure the invaders remain under control. If wooded areas adjacent to your home are so overgrown with this invasive shrub that control there seems impossible, then take the time to establish a line in which you will not let Japanese barberry cross. Keep it from establishing in the areas your family and pets frequent.

With little practice, spotting and removing Japanese barberry will become part of your regular gardening routine.

Garden thoughtfully,

Joene

Note: this is a rewrite of a previous post, Lyme-ticks thrive in Japanese barberry thickets.

Categories: Gardening, Invasives.
Tags: gardening in Connecticut, invasive plants, Japanese barberry.

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Newsy Notes: Plant Pathogens, Butterflies, Invasive Plant Spread

joenesgarden — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 14:46:19 +0000

Newsy Notes: Plant Pathogens, Butterflies, Invasive Plant Spread

Newsy Notes features quick explanations of research related to the growing of plants. I come across this research during my daily sweep of plant-related information. I found the items noted below of particular interest. Follow the links for more in depth reading on each topic. The following were all published by ScienceDaily.

E. coli, Salmonella may lurk in unwashable places in produce:

Washing fruits and vegetables may not remove E. coli or Salmonella, report Purdue University researchers. After developing a method to look at pathogens in nutrient-transporting plant tissue they found E. coli in mung bean sprouts and Salmonella in peanut seedlings after the seeds of each had been contaminated with the pathogens prior to planting. Proper washing removes dangerous pathogens from the outside of food, but heating to a specific temperature is needed to remove them from inside tissues. This, of course, does not occur with fruits and vegetables consumed raw such as salad greens and bean sprouts. The next research step is to try and determine how the pathogens survive inside plant tissues, which may lead to methods of eradication.

Major breakthrough on how viruses infect plants:

Cucumber mosaic virus causes disease by directly matching a host plant gene associated with chlorophyll formation, found plant scientists with The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia's national science agency. Like a zipper, one side of the gene - the virus side - directly matches the host plant gene. When scientists altered the host plant's genetic make up so it carried both copies, rather than one copy, of the chlorophyll forming gene the virus could not attack. With this knowledge, scientists can now search for genes in plant viruses that match plants' known genetic sequences in an effort to find ways to stop disease spread.

How butterflies copy their neighbors to fool birds:

Butterflies are truly amazing creatures. They migrate thousands of miles as part of their life-cycle and delight humans with their flittering and colors. Here's another amazing butterfly fact ... they can change wing patterns to fool birds, report researchers who studied wing color patterns of an Amazon butterfly species. Gene analyses in these butterflies showed they carry three versions of the chromosome that controls wing patterns. Butterflies, and apparently moths, alter wing patterns to make them less attractive to their specific predators. Fascinating!

Rural road maintenance may accidentally push spread of invasive plants:

When you think about this it's a no-brainer, but how many have actually considered that maintenance of a road bed in rural areas, such as grading work, can spread roadside invasive plants? Apparently it can, shows a computer simulation model developed by researchers at Penn State. They input field experiment data from spring road re-grading into their computer model to determine how this work might spread Japanese stilt grass. Though most of the sterile seeds used in their model remained within about 164 feet (50 meters) of their original location, a small percentage of seed moved more than 820 feet (250 meters). Of course, this is not the only way invasive plants spread, but it may help explain some spread.

NOTE: Click this link for more information on Japanese stilt grass in Connecticut. This invasive has quickly … and I mean quickly … invaded disturbed soils, lawns, roadside edges, and woodland edges in my neighborhood. It is currently the invasive weed I spend most of my time trying to control.

Categories: Gardening, General, Invasives, Newsy Items.
Tags: butterflies, invasive plants, Japanese stilt grass, Plant pathogens, ScienceDaily.

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