Saving the natives, 2 handfuls at a time

Some of you know that I've been trying to remove non-native invasives from a forest clearing, in particular Microstegium vimineum (Japanese Stiltgrass) and Perilla frutescens (Beefsteak Plant). Here are a few photos to show why I spend my time yanking weeds from the woods, an activity which would cause some (many?) to put "crazy" before "Muddy"!

The "before" photo refused to go first, so here are 2 "after" photos followed by the "before photo". The Stiltgrass and Beefsteak Plant from this area filled 3 lawn & leaf bags.

...and here is why "weeding the woods" is both challenging and very rewarding...
The first photo shows what I think is a native groundcover-type plant that I have in my own garden, but the name escapes me.

The second shows about 10 (hopefully) natives growing in and around a fern, including a possible Goldenrod possibly growing from seeds I sowed. It is a little painstaking separating the Stiltgrass from natives like Goldenrod and Polygonum because they all have slender leaves and are about the same height, but I try to minimize collateral damage.

3 and 4 are some hopefully natives I haven't tried to ID yet.

The last is probably a Polygonum species and a Virginia Creeper growing against the rock.

Last photos:

My makeshift compost pit for non-natives, a roughly 6' deep and 8' long pit once filled by roots from a mature tree that fell. It is getting full beyond capacity!

One of the few native plants I have seen growing from the thousands of seeds I sowed. This one survived because it is growing inside a bird netting protected area I created to allow a Sumac to grow large enough to survive deer browsing. Amazingly, the deer have not realized they could knock down the netting in a nanosecond!

Greenthumb, this grew from seeds you gave me. I know it's from the Mint family...a Blephilia species ??

The plant in the last two photos is Monarda punctata. I think the plant in photo 4, middle post is Bidens frondosa.

(applause) Good job!

Thanks! I guess I should have figured that out pretty easily given its dots.
I'm so glad the orange-flowered plant is native.

The low-growing plants in the first photo in the middle set aren't what I was thinking of. They remind me of Lobelia. What's most important right now is that they're not Stiltgrass!

Our favorite swimming hole for the dog is part of a local state park, and loaded with invasives, and this week I added Japanese hops to the list. So I do applaud your work.

Thanks, Sally. I wish I had started clearing the Stiltgrass earlier this summer; I'm playing catch-up.

I haven't seen any Japanese Hops there yet, but thanks for mentioning it. I'll look out for it.

This message was edited Sep 14, 2014 9:52 PM

It's nice you can use a creation from nature for the compost pile. I think large felled trees are so pretty as they lay across the forest floor and seeing the root ball is so cool.

I really think it's that stiltgrass that I have been getting in my Honeylocust garden. It pops up all over and it's so annoying. I'll have to take a pic of it sometime but I feel like I'm always picking it out and it's not like any grass I've ever seen growing in the yard.

The stiltgrass is appalling. It is so aggressive, and seems to spring from seed to full grown in a matter of minutes. So it returns about as fast as I can pull it. Horrible stuff.

Sequoia, if you can pull it out of the ground with zero effort, it's probably stiltgrass. Page 30 of this booklet (which is on page 34) shows stiltgrass and page 31 shows Leersia virginica, a native grass that closely resembles it.

One of the next patches I'll clear is a mix of Leersia virginica and stiltgrass, fortunately mostly the former.

Muddy: Can you post the link to the booklet to which you are referring? Thanks.

oops!! Here it is:
http://www.nybg.org/files/scientists/rnaczi/Mistaken_Identity_Final.pdf

This is another great resource, although it doesn't compare natives with non-native look-alikes.
http://www.nps.gov/plants/ALIEN/pubs/midatlantic/midatlantic.pdf

This message was edited Sep 15, 2014 7:31 PM

Muddy: The first booklet -- the one from NY Botanic Gardens -- is great. I tried to save it to my harddrive but was unable to -- do you think it is set up to prohibit saves?

Sounds as if it is "secured" and so cannot be saved -- https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1058613?tstart=0

Which is too bad.

This message was edited Sep 15, 2014 7:48 PM

Sequoia: Stiltgrass is on page 28 of the second link Muddy gave. Greenthumb identified it for me last year -- I had never heard of it before and thought it was so lovely and silky -- but monstrous. Our lawn is full of it. I have no idea how to get rid of it: I can't pull it out of the lawn. There is way too much. And it jumps from there into the beds.

Happy, stiltgrass is an annual. Mow it NOW before it sets seed, its that time of year. If you can, bag the clippings and send them away.

Happy, make sure there aren't any clumps of stiltgrass lurking under shrubs or elsewhere out of your mower's reach. The seeds from a single plant can produce a thousand new ones, and the seeds remain viable for years.

I know about those 1000s of seeds! I am dubious that a mowing will take care of it. We do use the mulching setting on the mower -- I suppose we could bag. But our lawn is mostly stiltgrass at this point -- it must seed very low to the ground. I wonder when it germinates. We used corn gluten this spring which helped a lot with some plants (mulberry weed, for example) but didn't seem to touch the stiltgrass.

Here is a depresssing write-up on stiltgrass: http://www.nyis.info/index.php?action=invasive_detail&id=32

Among many other sobering points, the article says: "In late summer and early fall, one or two delicate flower spikes form at the top of each stem. Each spike of flowers (inflorescence) can either require pollination or be self-fertile depending on soil moisture and sunlight availability. Individual plants can produce between 100 and 1000 seeds. Once those seeds mature the plant dies. Seeds can remain in the soil bank for at least 3 years. Japanese stiltgrass seeds readily germinate after a disturbance."

The sad truth is that even if you mow and bag this year, you'll still have stiltgrass in your lawn next year because the seeds live for up to 7 years, but at least seeds won't be added to the seed bank. I was so discouraged to see the forest full of stiltgrass again this year (although there was less) because I completely cleared the area last year.

What probably would help is putting a ton of grass seed on your lawn this fall. It'll germinate before the stiltgrass and crowd out the stilt grass.

Editing to add a recommendation for keeping stiltgrass out of beds: use shredded pine mulch (or pine bark nuggets or needles) instead of hardwood mulch because pine inhibits seed germination. My neighbors all have stiltgrass in their lawns, under their shrubs, etc. Some of their seeds drift over and germinate in my lawn and in bare dirt areas, but none in the beds where I use pine mulch.

This message was edited Sep 15, 2014 9:56 PM

I'll try that. I don't know whether it is better to use herbicides, which I avoid. The stuff is so thick on my property that there is no chance I can get rid of it all.

I was talking to David about the invasives by 'my' river, and was at a loss for a name, for a plant that was all over the place...he said Ranunculus ficaria? YUP LOL! " Ranunculus ficaria, It's that bad"

Its R ficaria in spring and Stilitgrass now, with side orders of Hop vine, Bittersweet, Perilla, garlic mustard...

Yes, there's a lot out there, unfortunately. I keep meaning to ID a probably non-native honeysuckle shrub so I can at least pull out the seedlings.

Muddy, my weed grass is easy to pull out from the garden but it's difficult to find the crown because it weaves its way all over and through other plants. I have to trace it back to the source, which makes it extra annoying to pull. I'll have to take a pic the next time I pull a chunk. I did pluck a seed stem the other day although I was in my slippers and not able to get into the garden to find the crown.

That doesn't sound like stiltgrass. Sometimes an entire stiltgrass plant will come up when I pull on just one stem. It has very shallow roots.

I agree -- it just spreads so far that it is still not all that easy to pull out a vast amount of it. But any individual plant is a piece of cake to remove.

Hmm...I don't know then. I'll have to take a pic of it next time.

This is that grass I've been talking about.

I don't think I've ever seen that around here. I can see why it would be hard to pull up.

Yeah it's terrible. I got a bunch out yesterday. Maybe I'll post it on the ID forum.

Sequoia,

That looks like some variety of Crab, Burmuda, or Zoysia grass.

Yeah on the plant ID forum they said it was Bermuda grass and to use Over The Top by Fertilome to get rid of it. I'll have to do some research on it though as I'm a little leery about spraying a grass killer on all my plants in this particular garden. In my small mind it makes me nervous because I have a hard time trusting that somehow the chemicals will know whether the leaf they're on is grass or not.

Not that I encourage the use of pesticides, but some products truly kill only monocots or dicots. (See video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI2RxzAT-ww for quick lesson.) Monocots are mostly grasses and bulb plants, while your broadleaf perennials are almost entirely dicots. This serves as the basis for lawn products that kill your broadleaf weeds but leave your turf grasses alive. Similarly, there are products that can kill your lawn and leave just the weeds behind, or remove grasses from perennial beds.

Yes, there are grass specific herbicides out there that by all appearances work well. But, I too am very skeptical of the safety of over the top spraying. I am remembering All the claims of safety that Monsanto made and is still making about round-up. I am also remembering that tests in 60 different countries have shown that it does not break down like claimed but stays in the soil and stays in the produce being sprayed. As far as the health hazards go let's just say that it is not being banned or limited in countries around the world because they found it safe. I will never spray chemicals "over the top" of the food I am going to eat.

Yeah I can see where that would be undesirable but luckily I'm an exclusively ornamental gardener so I don't have to worry about that. Thanks for the insight GT!

Muddy, I've started collecting wildflower seeds for you. I pulled the armfuls of clippings out of the van yesterday and laid them in the sun to dry. Now I have trimmed them enough to fit into a big platic tote with drain holes and a lid, hopefully to dry the rest of the way. Then as they dry I am using a dustbuster to suck the fluff out of the bin/off the branches, and bag it. There are zillions of tiny seeds on Eupatorium heads....Eupatorium X2, black eyed susan, liatris, will have that Bidens with petals and long squiggly ?sepals the things behind the head, the one David IDed for me

Thanks, I really appreciate that! What a great idea to use a dustbuster; I never would have thought of that.

I pulled up a few more bags of Stiltgrass today. I wish I could get it all, but I realized that's not going to happen because I got such a late start this year. I've cleared virtually all of it out of large patches, however, and I'm really hoping those areas won't be covered again next year!

Sally, don't bother to separate the seeds for me; I don't mind if they're still on the stems.

After thinking (and fuming) about it, I realized that seeds don't germinate in the woods because stilt grass emits a chemical or toxin that prevents competitive plants from germinating - or at least most of them - and the same substance affects the growth of plants that do sprout.

I'll try transplanting seedlings I grow at home.

Wow, that stuff is ruthless!

Yeah, it does sound ruthless. So is the burmuda/crab grass group. They spread sideways both above ground and below by Rhizomes. They can be pulled easily in soft loose soil, but are real difficult in tighter soils.