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Invasive species in your backyard - or aquarium!

I got my computer back today!  Yay!  Can you tell?
I came across this link on the Natural Resources Defense Council site (just donate to their cause & you, too, could get mail from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)  but they have some interesting stuff there.  I am trying to get rid of a multifloral (briar) rose, myself.  I can't use an herbicide because I have my veggie garden right next to it.  We have loosestrife taking over our cattails in our wet areas, too.  Anybody else ever seen any of these?
http://nature.org/initiatives/invasivespecies/features/
edit -
oops! I got my organizations mixed up. See below.
 
those are some nice "weeds"!
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Very interesting how those pictures were taken by barry rice!
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As to getting rid of them, why not give yourself a backache and put on some gloves, and pull them by hand?
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That's exactly what I've been doing.  It's the only way for me.  Those things sure like to grow, though.  I cut them down several times each season.  The "trunk" of the shrub is well established from years of growing wild before we moved here.
Hey, I missed that, Spec, that 4 of those 5 pics on this page were taken by Barry.  Sharp eyes!  
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Some of those are pretty! Just not in my yard!! And that sumac is everywhere... my neighbors put one in their yard. It was nice for a while but then it starting coming up everywhere!! >.+
 
My mistake!  After Spec 73 noted the pics were taken by Barry I went back & checked & this was a Nature Conservancy site - not Natural Resources Defense Council.  Gosh!  Ya can't tell your organizations without a score card.  My apologizies.  <sheepish grin>
 
You want to talk about invasive species? I live in Virginia. We have Kudzu EVERYWHERE.
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Not to mention that tree of heaven. There's a big one in my front yard, and others circling our property that are too numerous to count. They're so common around here, I was under the impression they were native
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While driving through Northern Ca, the roadsides were spotted with huge Pampas Grass plants(or something similar). Pretty sure they weren't native!


Tree of Heaven....nice name...
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they like to sprout up in the middle of flower beds and give you a heck of a tiem removing them.
 
I have this Ivy crap all over and the Dutch Elm wont die for nothing except at like 10yrs or so they get Dutch Elm disease and finally die leaving these monster stumpsin the most inconvenient places. Maples are horrible her too, those darn whirrly birds/helicopters get in everything. To top it all off the ****ing squirrels dig in the pots to burry the acorns and walnuts. AAAHHHHH....I hate the squirels every year they tear up my pots to burry those flipin nuts. Invasive "weeds" are an everyday problem here. OH I forgot that stupid vine that can't be killed, it grows milk pods. Also theres the trumpet vine, it grows like wildfire here and there and in things..........

Yeah,
Joe
 
Multiflora rose..................ugh have fun.....I still have the scar from spring on my arm....
 
  • #10
Hey Mike...only name I've known those "trees of heaven" by is...ghetto palm.
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Which I think is quite a better description of them. There is nothing heavenly about them. They will always be ghetto palms to me.
 
  • #11
Superimposedhope is it bind weed? nasty stuff.

Our most annoying and invasive weeds here tend to be chick weed, bind weed and wild morning glory. Personal I think the wild morning glory are beautiful, but they do kill other plants (as do the bind weed).

Our most imbarrassing is the ditch weed
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The fantastic thing about ditch weed though is that it is helping in the fight against marijuana dealers. It is so invasive that if the seeds of the ditch weed are drop (say from a small plane) onto a purposefully grown, high quality marijuana farm the ditch weed takes over in short order, breeds with the good stuff and ruins it (3% THC). Hehehehe
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It is the more dominent strain.
 
  • #12
HAHAHAHA,
I don't get the wild morning glory here but I do plant regular morning glory. I don't know the vine is, we always just called it "milk pod" cause it has these pods that are milky until they split then they release these hairy seeds that float on the wind.
Creeping Charlie is the name of the ivy. The Trumpet vine and Honey Suckle are ferocious too.

Joe
 
  • #13
Alaska wasn't even on the list
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  • #14
As for using herbacide right next to your garden, you could paint it on the leaves with a paint brush or dip a few branches into a cup of herbacide. No need to spray.

The problem with pulling some weeds is that they multiply from each piece of root left behind. You could end up with even more plants then when you started!

I try and go the organic route when possible but sometimes roundup is the only solution. I was fortunate to meet Barry Rice on a trip to CA last year and asked him about ways to control invasive species. He said that roundup is "pretty good", it breaks down fairly quickly into relatively non-harmful parts.

I hate putting money into the chemical industries pocket but I guess sometime you just have to suck it up and do what you have to do.

Just thought I would chime in.

Glenn
 
  • #15
My better half should really be the one throwing her 2 cents in but she is at work. She is a lab tech for an invasive species lab with IFAS at UF. As for your multifloral rose problem cut the stem about 4 or 5 inches above ground level and use a brush on herbicide to coat the exposed portion. I don't belive Round-up will work for this aplication, but I am not sure.

Man, oh man, is Florida over run with invasives. Every where you look, and for a state that claims to be aware of the problem and trying to fix it they just keep making the same stupid mistakes. Here in Gainesville, a campain was lead that finally convinced the city to stop planting Chinese Tallow and remove the existing trees. Unfortantly the city replace them with Chinese (Paper Bark) Elms.

One of the projects that my grilfriend works on is a massive Ruellia study funded by the DEP. Ruellia brittoniana is already a major invader in Florida's wetlands, but you can go buy it at just about every nursury in the state and it is one of the most common landscape plants used.

And you know most people have know idea either. I saw somebody posting air potatoes for SASE (I can't rember where), I saw another guy in Florida posting Salvinia for sale. I have even been in so called native plant nurseries around here and found non-native species being sold as natives. People generally have no clue what they are doing when it comes to this stuff.

It is not just plants either, we have some nasty invasive bugs and animals. Florida hosts 23 species of Anole, 22 of those are invasive. We have established populations of at least 3 species of Monkey. Tropical snakes, all sorts of non-native fish, turtels, forgs, and the list can go on and on.

And now because of California's little mistake with the 2000 or so Camelias that got sent throughout the US, Florida is closed to plants from California. You known the Withering Oak Desease prolem they have out there? That is the real invasive that scares me. Just image the Southeast with NO OAKS. Man its a scary thought. Its hard enough dealing with what has happened to the Chestnut and the high elevation spruce/fir forest. Lose the oaks too and you have major ecological armageddon in the Appalachians.

On a happier note I will close with something a very strange friend of mine once told me (though I can't figure out why): "If I [he] were ever to become a dendraphile, tree-of-heaven my tree of choice... such soft bark" LOL. We are still not sure if he was kidding or not, but every time I talk invasives I think about that infamous statement.

P.S. Keep in mind I am a botanist, our sense of humor is very off.
 
  • #17
I was part of a Loosestrife study project in my college days here. There is no pulling it out, its stolons reach everywhere, it offsets and seeds to beat the band. We are losing our cattail populations here. They are useful, Lossestrife is not.

There are even CP invasives: D. capensis is loose in both Florida and California, choking out natural species in bogs where it was introduced. Someone probably wanted to see if it would survive. It did.
 
  • #18
But is Dionea muscipula invasive in the areas where it's being introduced? Or even Sarracenia purpurea? I know preserving them is a worthy cause, but I get nervous when I hear of people taking plants from one habitat and putting them in another. Whoever introduced Drosera capensis probably meant well, but obviously had little undstanding of it's growth and reproductive rate.
 
  • #19
Wow, i didn't realize that the jungle in the backyard of the building where i live is a preserve for invasive species.  I can vouch for Tree of Heaven being a pain, as well as Kudzu.  nice guyleburr (Burdock?) (Edit: Heh, guess the auto-censor converts co-ckleburr to 'nice guy'burr) is a big weed there, too.

My personal least-favorite invasive species is Tamarisk, which has converted many of the riparian zones in scenic S. Utah to a nasty pric kly (Edit: this auto-censor is ridiculous) wasteland where nothing else wants to live.
 
  • #20
Hmm an invasive species I have thats in my aaqaurium is aiptasia, I hate them. Any time I see one I bust out the boiling hot calcium hydroxcide...
 
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