Post wildfire dealing with a lot of scotch broom invasion. Luckily I planted immediately after the fire with pines, so I shouldn't half to battle them too much before long. One of the most hardy bushes it seems cut them flush and they come right back.
Anyone have any other species they hate? Or dealt with scotch broom themselves. Think of spraying some of them.
What a nasty nasty plant. it's up there with hawthorn IMO
Texas has every thing with thorns, stickers, horse killers, etc, but for me the worse is a plumb thicket, particularly cutting a line through them, next is bull nettles that sneaks up on you when you have your eye on a compass. Followed by fire ants. Good thing I loved my job.
Dogfennel !;$&@:;()(!?,/~€%}{!!!
I hate dogfennel! It is a native plant and grows prolifically in cattle pastures. It's hard to get rid of without spraying a herbicide of some type. I have used crossbow and 2-4-d at different times but it's been several years.
Japanese Knotwood and Oriental Bittersweet are some of the worst around here.
Bedstraw on field you want to reforest is pretty bad. Never used to have that, don't know where it came from. There is a native kind but it does not take over fields. Also I hate red osier dogwoods, they will cover a place, lots of times abandoned fields that should be reforested. And herbicide won't kill it. At least I have never seen any that were effective on dogwood.
I'm heading into my fifth year in my battle w/. Japanese knotweed.
Cut it July first, spray it end of September with something that claims to kill the root.
Ya, right.
But I'm sort of winning. It gets thinner every year.
Around here you can tell where someone once lived, the house might have burnt down but that Japanese knotweed lives on. ffcheesy
If bull briar had any value I would be a billionaire. It cuts me, trips me, invades trails and just all around sucks.
So far just a bullbriarnaire
When I lived on the west coast you either had an understory of devil's club or salal vines in more open canopy, never cared much for either one. ffcheesy I think the best over all forest to walk in out there were on Haida Gwai, the mainland had a lot of weeds under the trees. :D
Quote from: WhitePineJunky on March 21, 2025, 10:30:23 AMPost wildfire dealing with a lot of scotch broom invasion. Luckily I planted immediately after the fire with pines, so I shouldn't half to battle them too much before long. One of the most hardy bushes it seems cut them flush and they come right back.
We have Broom here in NZ, it's a bit of a weed, but not as bad as Gorse. From a forest perspective, neither are really a serious long term problem as they won't grow under an established canopy. Once native trees (that are shade tolerant) start growing up through it they stop it regenerating. So one method of regenerating native forest on gorse covered land is simply "do nothing". Native trees will eventually grow up through the gorse or broom. It's more of a pain if you want farmland of course.
Manuka is a small native tree that has the some ecological niche, first coloniser. It grows in open ground, but only lives for 20-30 years. But it provides shelter for other trees and ferns for the 2nd stage.
More of a pain is "Old Mans Beard", a clematis vine from Europe. It will form a dense matt in the forest, up to ~60 feet up in trees, and smother pretty much everything else. Seeds are spread by the wind, so it's on the "kill on sight" list. I believe it's also a pest in parts of the USA.
For your broom you can probably get away with knocking it down with a clearing saw around each pine. As long as you create a patch of light, the pines will soon over-top the broom, and eventually smother it.
We have a wild clematis here but it only grows on rich soil of semi wetland and mainly in alder groves. Old man's beard up here is a lichen that grows on old fir branches and used by northern parula warblers for nesting and also eaten by deer from blow down snags.
Yeah, the native clematis vine here is mostly harmless, and quite pretty. The introduced one is murder
I've had cultivated ones here on trellis, but they never left the yard as far as seeding in the wild.
But a bad one is Virginia creeper vines. It produces berries and birds spread it far and wide. I've not see it be a problem in forest, but in yard trees and telephone poles, that is another matter. :D
Multi-flora rose and autumn olive here.
Japanese knotweed around here too but none on or close to my land. Doesn't seem as invasive as the broom. I think it comes down to the acidic soil favouring scotch broom.
There is a area on the land that had fill and gravel moved around to make a woods road, some top soil scalped too, probably 60 years ago or so, the broom originated in that disturbed area, you can actually tell to where the equipment scaled the top soil off because the stuff grows there the thickest, even though the disturbance was 60 year ago
bradford pear, autumn olive, honeysuckle, privet, saw briar
the first 4 are invasive and take over if you let them.
Saw Briar has torn me up several times, its like a barbed wire vine
Canary Grass!
Kudzu smiley_thumbsdown
Buckthorn, garlic mustard, multiflora rose (encroaching from neighbor)
Buckthorn, scotch pine, norway maple, Phragmites
Quote from: mike dee on March 22, 2025, 12:07:47 PMBuckthorn, scotch pine, norway maple, Phragmites
Got scotch pines around here only as yard trees though. Ugly crocked things typically but when they grow straight make a decent looking tree.
Sycamore maple is another "invasive" but I like them as yard trees. They are all over around town they drop a ton of seeds each year
Multi flora rose and bittersweet around hedgerows are infested with it. Got some bittersweet you could just about make firewood out of. Multi flora rose is the only carnivorous plant we have around here. ffcheesy
Have some get caught on your left hand by the time you reach to remove it the other end is grabbing you by the right ear get that removed and it's stuck on your left cheek. Miserable stuff.
I have heard several times Cornell University introduced it as a living fence for livestock. If it's true what a mistake that was
Kudzu and multi floral rose were promoted by the extension service.
Kudzu was supposed to be erosion control and cattle feed. Multi floral rose was supposed to be natural cattle fence.
My dad remembers the extension service providing seedlings. My grandpa planted some of both. Dad and I both had to use dozers to remove the stuff.
Fortunately, my FIL and his father didn't go for either.
Any multi floral rose we have is volunteer plants. Nothing a bush hog and glyphosate won't deal with.
What we do have is wisteria ! Ugh!
The worse in this area as far as I'm concerned is PRICKLY ASH.
It's thorns resemble those of the rose.
This plant is AKA the TOOTHACHE TREE, due to it's medicinal properties. Research says people can get some relief from toothache by chewing a twig, or a piece of the plant.
When in high school, our FFA chapter was involved ('53) in the County and State push to get fence rows in Iowa planted to multiflora rose, with the idea that it would be great for conservation and wildlife, helping the pheasant population. Disastrous as it later turned out.
55 years ago I had a patch of prickly ash. It's gone now, but I'd be hard pressed to remember what I did other than just cut it down when I came across one. No concerted effort other than that.
I don't know about the prickly ash for toothache, but I do know that clove oil will relieve it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xBJERznOgA
Tell me, is it safe?
ffcheesy ffcheesy
Another vote for honeysuckle. Around here it seems to take up all the space that good stuff could grow in.
The backyard, when we moved in, had tons of honeysuckle around every tree, enough that you couldn't see more than about 50 feet back, and the property line is just full of honeysuckle choking out everything. My wife is a monster and removed all the honeysuckle around the trees in the yard, now you can see hundreds of feet back, and she makes yearly progress on the stuff along the tree line.
Our wild kind here never gets more than 20" tall for the fly honeysuckle kind, but can spread. I have some on a trail and it's maybe 12" tall. The other kind is a solitary bush with yellow flowers real early in spring and red fruit, bush honeysuckle. I never see it taller than 3 feet in the woods in a clump. Down in southern NB where I have worked with a clearing saw a time or two, some places is full of that hard hack spirea (wild). And I have worked in one spot near Miramachi Lake that was full of wild raisin brush. We never had to cut either of them. I always cut them where I walked just to be able to move around. Often the trees were sparce so you just went here or there to thin out other trees from around a spruce or fir. But hazel is bad some places, we have to cut that stuff.
Henbit or henbit deadnettle is a pain around my gravel driveways and parking pads. It just keeps coming, I feel like I'm fighting the Chinese with a bag of rocks.
Ailanthus is a pita for me. It's not bad if caught before it spreads. Another is privet. Birds spread both so vigilance is necessary. Ailanthus actually makes middling kindling if cut and dried for a year. It's not the firewood to bank a fire overnight but once dry is good for a quick fire.
A bane across many areas is English Ivy. It's worse about spreading than our native poison ivy. Somebody in our neighborhood must have planted it and now it's strangling trees.
We have bindweed to strangle trees around here. I owned a 6 acre lot on a mountain that was devastated by an ice storm and then pretty much clear cut. The bindweed turned every sapling that was left into twisted, bent useless shrubs. It's hard to get rid of a large infestation. Kill every one you see !!
Field Bindweed even goats won't eat it. Mulberry trees, honey locust, Siberian elm and of course various thistle species.
For me it is basswood, nobody wants it for logs, not worth the time and effort for firewood, the tree version of quackgrass.....The old timers nickname for the town closest to me was Basswood Corners, I think they named after my woods. I'll keep thinning out the young, crooked and diseased basswood, letting the hard maple grow that are trying to come on.
Scott B.
Dad would cut a basswood once in awhile mistaking the bark for maple. I'd say why did you cut that for firewood? He'd come back with it'll make heat and ashes. :D
Marathon Man brings back memories of my second root canal procedure. The pain blocker did not work.
Honeysuckle, ivy and Star Thistle.
We were constantly battling star thistle when we had the horse ranch. A little poke every time you got near it that would really start to hurt later as the poison or whatever started working on you. Heavy watering would slow it down.
When we moved to rural suburbia 27 years ago, the big backyard was planted with crepe murtles and jasmine. Two kinds of ivy invaded from my neighbor and some honeysuckle that was growing around the deck went nuts. I spent 2 years digging and pulling it out along with the jasmine. There is still all three that pop up all over the yard in small attempts at taking over again.
Quote from: upnut on March 24, 2025, 07:51:29 PMFor me it is basswood, nobody wants it for logs, not worth the time and effort for firewood, the tree version of quackgrass.....The old timers nickname for the town closest to me was Basswood Corners, I think they named after my woods. I'll keep thinning out the young, crooked and diseased basswood, letting the hard maple grow that are trying to come on.
Scott B.
If it's the same basswood, decoy carvers like it and will pay for it.
Honeysuckle down here commonly gets 15 plus feet tall and if left unchecked I've cut trunks in the 8" range, it's gnarly and hangs up on everything. It does look and smell pretty if kept under control, and I imagine the bees like it.
the honeysuckle here is a japanese honeysuckle.
It really aggravates allergys and is a very strong scent.
I have several areas where it has taken over fence lines and field edges.
I wonder if ours is the same machinebuilder... I would suspect so. I don't have allergy issues, as far as I know, but that junk does take over. I probably wouldn't mind it on the property lines if it just grew mostly up but it stretches out far and makes if difficult and painful to mow.
Quote from: TreefarmerNN on March 24, 2025, 06:15:21 PMA bane across many areas is English Ivy.
Yeah, I've got a patch of that down the back yard. Really should go and deal with it, but it may be all that's holding up the retaining wall over the stream. :wacky: So it's a nuisance only really.
I have a cultivated honeysuckle in the back yard that I don't know the source. I never planted it. Years ago I planted one that grows like vine, but that's long gone. This one is a big bush. Has light purplish flowers. I don't even see any around the neighborhood. This is very rural wide open country around here. Fields and woods. I have a weigelia that the hummingbirds like. That doesn't seem to spread it's offspring around.
I don't think I've seen any purple honeysuckle! We only get yellow or white.
When I was a wee tyke we lived out in the country and there was tons of honeysuckle then too. We liked to pluck the flowers and suck out the tiny bits of nectar. We had a rule, at the time I thought was a law of nature or something, that we weren't supposed to pluck the yellow ones (or was it the white ones? I don't remember) so the bees could have them.
After years of hauling in hay bales, I got a large number of varieties of grass and weeds in my small pasture. The old garden spot has been taken over by Bahia and Bermudagrass. I just keep it mowed down. I drive by some fields and can't believe what they cut and bale.
I see it here to on the weedy fields someone expects to sell for 'hay'. There was a day that you couldn't sell that at all. Some will buy it because the old timers that made good hay are out of the picture and maybe there is no good growers. Maybe there are, but miles away to. We have weeds now in fields I never saw as a kid. A lot by these hobby farmer types who's day job or the wife's pays the farm bills. I see enough of them around to say it isn't just one hobby farm. I'm sure there are a few good operators, but rare they are around here. When dad cut them kinds of fields, it was for neighbors who wanted the stuff mowed down annually, never was there any hay to make and bring home to the cows. We grew our own good hay. And that has been 50 years now. And we were a small dairy farm then. They went big after that, and most of them are long gone now. NB market share was about 2% and was never allowed to get any bigger. You have two levels of government controlling that operation. Once the quota gets gobbled up, too bad. Easier to police 4 dairy farmers than 4000 ones.
We always tried to keep our pastures in good shape when we kept cows. The cows got rotated from pasture to pasture. A couple of pastures doubled for hay production, so cross fences were important.
Our hay fields were of greatest importance so they got sprayed to control the weeds we could. They got fertilized and mowed on a regular basis. We had tall fescue, orchard grass and Timothy grass mixed.
The "farmer"/guy who leases our farm now has let the grazing areas go. Some are in bad shape and I don't know what his cows eat. He just maintains the perimeter fences and no internal fences for rotating his cows.
The hay fields have broom straw, dog fennel and blackberry briars growing in spots and a few persimmon sprouts around.
He says about the hay he cuts, "Cows will eat it, it's better than snowballs." Only thing I can figure is farming is a tax shelter.
Quote from: SwampDonkey on March 21, 2025, 04:38:25 PMBedstraw on field you want to reforest is pretty bad. Never used to have that, don't know where it came from. There is a native kind but it does not take over fields. Also I hate red osier dogwoods, they will cover a place, lots of times abandoned fields that should be reforested. And herbicide won't kill it. At least I have never seen any that were effective on dogwood.
I suspect your taking about white bedstraw (Galium mollugo).
I have it in a feild. I sprayed it with Milestone.
Its a more selective herbicide.
Relatively expensive but effective.
It killed all the bedstraw without too much damage to surrounding plants.
This summer will be the test to see how much comes back from seed.
I suspect it'll be 2-3 years and it'll be gone.
Only issue is the field is half mine and half my neighbors.
He don't care, so I suspect I'll be fighting it for along time.