Neighbor Planted Phragmites australis

A neighbor has planted (last Year) Phragmites australis in the rear of his yard by a small water feature. It has spread nearly 10 feet this season and will definitely be in my conifer and Japanese Maple garden ( 45 x 20 ) next spring. In spite of politely, very politely, providing him with info from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources about this invasive he will not remove it or take any steps to control it. Any ideas?

The further it spreads, the more I'd tell him politely that's it coming my way and when it hits my land, I will use whatever I need to to kill it and remove it from my property....with a smile on my face of course. He's not being a very nice considerate neighbor. sheesh.

Blows my mind that somebody would intentionally plant that. I'd take photos of it so that maybe in the future you can reason with him by politely pointing out to him how fast it is spreading.

I don't know if you realize this but that plant can be a fire hazard.

Oh, fire hazard huh? That's nice. Mr. Phragmites gets on it during the weekends with a Weber grill and a few six packs right by his water feature. Time to put a fire extinsguisher in my back garden shed. I'll look around and see if I can find anything printed that explains the fire hazard aspect. It's odd because this stuff is also heading for his brother's backyard too. His brother lives next to me and shares part of the Mr. Phragmites back property line. Brother's gonna have bigger problem then me with his storage shed entrance, wood pile and dog run. He won't be able to get into any of it in about two years time with the way this stuff is moving. What chemical will kill it? Anything? The ODNR literature only talks about digging and cutting for at least two years. It took me six years to gather and plant this Japanese style conifer garden. Now this.

Some good news. The municipality has a noxious weed ordinance. This is a small town and this ordinance has never been enforced, but at least I think I can make a case for its use here. I may have to get an attorney. Whatever it takes.


Some bad news. It is not listed as a noxious weed in Ohio. It is listed only as an invasive. It is listed Federally as noxious.

This message was edited Sep 7, 2007 11:46 AM

I've got it here on my property. An insurance agent lives in the area and he's got little kids in his home that he wants to not go up in smoke. I used to get notes from him all the time to do something about it before we got a lightening strike and burned down all the houses in the neighborhood. The wetlands is shared and I need the cooperation of the other families that own a chunk of it before I can do anything. They were all willing to take care of it until I got the price quotes. Then when they learned it was going to cost them thousands of dollars, all but one family, decided it was "beautiful" and "natural" looking and that it should stay. We own the largest chunk of the wetlands and our portion of the bill would probably be somewhere around 10k and we are willing to go for it. The guy next door is willing to go for it and his bill would be somewhere around maybe 2/3rds of what our bill would be based on the portion he owns. The others that are only a couple thousand dollars a piece are the stumbling blocks. All of the sudden they acquired a fondness and attachments to this very aggressive strain of European Phragmites.

Bad news for me, we're in the same boat as you with the laws we have on the books. Now I just tell the insurance agent to put the notes in the mailboxes of the people who aren't willing to shell out a couple thousand dollars to get it cleaned up.

I tried to hire professionals for the whole area at my expense to do a prescribed burn and none of them were willing to do the work for any price. The build up of leaves and stems over the years is incredible and the height of these plants is phenomenal. A prescribed burn would help lower our costs if we were to go for chemical eradication. It wouldn't affect the rhizomes but would open up the area to be able to treat the new growth. One problem, the independent contractors don't want the liability of any sparks from these 18' plants drifting with all the red oaks that hang onto their leaves in the area and all the cedar shake roofs on the homes, and yes- the plants here are in the 18' range in some areas and their height has been documented. We're now dealing with acres of this plant and might as well add in the acres of Narrow Leaf Cattail which is another one that's a big problem. Then we had the fire department out here a few times to see if they would conduct a prescribed burn for training purposes and so far no takers because the biomass is so great they are afraid the area might burn for years from all the biomass that's been created from the life cycle of these plants. We've got a big problem here and I hope you don't end up in the same boat as us. I've tried to control the Phragmites on my property but because the others don't do anything, it's back the next year. We've cleared our property in such a manner as to create a fire ring in the event it goes up. We think we have enough space to be able to protect our home but we would lose a brand new greenhouse, a kids' treehouse, and a new 1.5 story storage barn because Phragmites fires burn extremely hot.

I've considered buying a hydro saw. One problem is that they're very expensive and then there would be the operating expenses and follow up with restoring the property with more appropriate species to thwart off further invasions.

This plant is a hollow stemmed wetlands plant. You have to use approved chemicals to go for it and that varies from state to state. AquaMaster has worked for me-
http://www.cal-ipc.org/symposia/archive/pdf/17845.pdf
Rodeo has also worked for me-
http://ccrm.vims.edu/wetlands/techreps/02-2-phragmites.pdf

But, none of these will provide anything but temporary relief if your neighbor doesn't clean up the source and you'll end up spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on chemicals. Go ahead, try to create some case law. You'd be my hero.

We're not talking a minor fire risk with this plant, we're talking a major fire risk because the plant is highly flammable. Oops, forgot to add these for you-
http://www.capemay.com/capemayarchives/2004/sept04/phragmites.html
http://www.capegazette.com/storiescurrent/0705/phragmites071505.html
http://www.manchesternh.gov/CityGov/dpw/EPD/SEPP/files/80AEF8DF00F448B7A83969BD1F5F0672.pdf
http://www.des.state.nh.us/factsheets/cp/cp-05.html
http://www.dof.virginia.gov/fire/phragmites-and-fire.shtml
http://www.nesec.org/hazards/Fire.cfm

I truly thought all of my neighbors would cooperate. If I had any inkling that they weren't going to cooperate, I would have come in with the big guns years ago but now the entire area is infested and it is a contained wetland so it can't spread out any further vegetatively. Unfortunately, these plants reproduce sexually too so their seeds are spreading to other natural areas and there is nothing I can do except to sit here and wait for that one lightening strike that will get everyone's attention. There are currently several fires still burning in Phragmites infested areas in the next county over that started from lightening strikes. Two have been burning for over a year.

One thing I was successful in doing was getting a variance to have an asphalt shingle roof on our home and the separate structures. The insurance agent did the same thing. I think we are the only two homes here that have asphalt shingle dimensional fire-resistant roofs- does this tell you something?

Yikes - Equil! Thanks for the links. I had no idea what a huge and serious problem it could be for developed areas. I made a phone call to the Nature Conservancy today who referred me to the local soil and water conservation agent. Phragmites is a big worry in NW Ohio. The fact that residents were actually actively moving it into residential areas was something he was very sorry to hear. There is another transplanted stand about 1 1/2 miles from here in a sub division front yard! The agent is going to contact the state and ask for assistance in getting the invasive off the state invasive list and on the noxious weed list. Then we will have more ammunition to fight people like my neighbor who actually move the plant. He feels that there is an excellent chance for this to happen. Apparently this has been the subject of a few meetings at the state level recently. He wants pics of the two transplanted stands I know of. There is some hope here locally. In the mean time I guess I just fight it on my side of the fence with chemicals and a shovel. I would never do any night time commando weed killng mission. Not my style. What I can't figure out is what this neighbor is going to do with it. It is also heading for his back door, above ground pool, water feature and garage. In two years, at this rate, he will need a machete to get from his car to his house!

Be careful, there are those who will tell you it is very difficult to tell the European and the NA native form of Phragmites apart. Not true but back yourself up by sending off a specimen of the plant to Cornell University because I can assure you which one he has is going to come up. The native is Phragmites australis ssp. americanus. Might as well knock that out of the ball park right now and... Do you realize how long the process could take to get that plant listed as a noxious weed and do you realize that even if the plant does ultimately make it onto your state's hall of shame list that there would be little if nothing you could do to force him to remove it?

Hate to ask this question but what about driving some sheet piling down along your lot line? The roots generally only go down about 6'.

I will definitely get it identified, as some of it is already hanging over the fence. Plus I can get good photos. The soil and water conservation agent seems quite positive. Seems the state is already moving in that direction. Plus, if we get a "nuisiance ordinance" passed locally, similar to one in St. Louis, then one property owner can not knowingly let an "introduced" plant invade anothers property. Introduced means the property owner moved it onto his property. Think bamboo or ampelopsis or purple loosestrife. I havn't seen the St. Louis ordinance. Never heard of it until my conversation with the agent today. I can get local legislation like that passed. Do it all the time. Plus the Nature Conservancy has the jitters about this stuff getting too close to two preserves within a few miles from here. They will definitley assist in the push. I'm hopeful.

You've already got it identified, you just need to have it "formally" identified and Cornell is pretty hard to argue with. I sent mine out to them for the DNA testing.

I have photographs and some really good close ups of the native Phragmites. Really neat pics.

It's actually the The St Louis Declaration not the St Louis Ordinance to which the agent was probably referring. The St Louis Declaration was voluntary. You might want to look that up on the Internet. It's a good read. Some very good things went on there.

I wouldn't count on TNC backing you for that crap getting too close to the State's Preserves. TNC has limited resources. We can talk about that privately some time. They're a good organization but they're definitely spread a little thin these days.

Your neighbor is going to be about as cooperative as some of mine were.