Day 3

I completed the third day of removing invasive vegetation from one of the fields at the Skaneateles Conservation Area.  I've encountered European buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), and some grape vines.  The first three of these are non-indigenous species that provide very little support for wildlife and severely inhibit the growth of native vegetation.  The grape vines are probably native to this region and do provide food for wildlife, but also prevent native trees from taking hold.  In some places it seems like these four invasives team up to strangle the native trees, or to just shade out an area so nothing else can grow.

Brush pile as of this morning, looking toward the south-west.

 My initial plan was to start by first cutting down any invasives impinging on the existing hiking trails, and then to gradually extend the invasive-free zones around the trails until (far into the future) no undesirable alien vegetation could be seen from the trails.  Then (in my next life) I could start on the areas away from the trails.

Clearing invasives from the near the trails would help reduce trail maintenance time, since these are generally the faster-growing plants and in warm sunny weather, the honeysuckle in particular seems to fill in any empty space within days of being trimmed.

The pink area is about where I've cleared so far.  The yellow ellipse is the brush pile location.

But, because of the cold windy weather and the wet muddy trails, so far I've stuck to a single sunny and relatively dry area which is fairly sheltered from the wind.  It's probably not a good idea to trudge back and forth dragging trees on muddy trails.  This area has mainly small buckthorn trees (ranging from 1 to 4 inches in diameter) and a smaller number of honeysuckle bushes.  But, it usually takes longer to cut down a honeysuckle bush because of  the large number of stems.

Tell-tale yellow-orange buckthorn stump.

 I try to positively identify every individual before I cut it down, hoping that it's really an upright citizen, but it seldom is.  Even so. in the case of the buckthorns, it's a relief to see the orange ring on stump, letting me know that I didn't execute the wrong individual.

Multiflora rose hips, still holding on in late March. 

So, what's left after clearing out these four invasives. Well, not a whole lot. Of course, the grasses have not started to come up yet, but there are a number of unidentifiable saplings, which have been browsed upon beyond recognition (by me anyway). In fact that could be used as plant ID criterion #1. If nothing has chewed on it, it's bad: cut it down. Otherwise, let the critters finish it off.

Buckthorn branch.

Grape Guilt

When we first moved to this house over 10 years ago, the primary invasive plants appeared to us to be the grape vines, which were obviously damaging the trees on the Western, swampy side of out lot. Though I wasn't sure whether the problems resulted more from the vines or the seasonal flooding of the area. One of our first autumns here I pulled down miles of vines and made them into large wreaths of various sizes, up to about 12 feet in diameter. With these wreaths, I constructed a tee-pee-like structure in the back yard. When this became unsightly in the spring, I hauled it all back into the woods for use as a fence around the composting compound.

Newly re-sprouted grape leaves at the base of an ash tree.  September 2010.

These vines had been producing a copious amount of fruit, and I later wondered whether I was doing the right thing by pulling down these native plants which seemed to be a good source of bird food. I questioned my actions even more when I realized that a good deal of what they were climbing on were alien honeysuckle and buckthorn trees. But it seemed that they were using the smaller fast-growing aliens to reach the taller native trees, so I eventually convinced myself that it was the combination of the grape vines and the alien invasives that was the problem. It turns out that grapes and other native vines are indeed considered to be a major problem in most areas, where woods no longer densely cover large areas but exist only in thin bands along the edges of land used for other purposes. Grapes evolved to take advantage of holes in a mature forest, and would die back once the holes healed up. But now the holes are bigger than the forest and we won't allow them to heal up, so the vines take over whole wooded area, killing or weakening the trees that the climb. So it turns out that I was doing the right thing by removing the native vines.