“I need to clean up my woods.”
“I need to clear out some brush.”
“I need to destroy some nature.”
These three sentences mean the same to me. Unfortunately,
the people that say the first two usually don’t realize they mean the third
one. I watched this week as some folks in my neighborhood paid a guy to clean
up and clear out the edges (I hope it was just the edges) of their woods. He
whacked a number of young native trees, including a female persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) tree that
had borne fruit the last two years. Yet he left standing a non-native mahonia
shrub (Mahonia bealei), probably
because, with its green leaves, it “looked” more like a desirable plant than
that bare deciduous persimmon.
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| Tiny white persimmon flowers (Diospyros virginiana) |
People that set out to “clean up and clear out” usually don’t
know much about the plants that they are about to tackle. And certainly the day
laborer or two that they hire to do it doesn’t know much about the plants that
stand in the way of a tidy woodland. Unfortunately sometimes special plants get
axed in the process. Down the road from my neighborhood, a developer marked
with orange tape some saplings along the roadside. The next day, a crew came in
and removed them all. A casualty of the effort was a tree-sized Viburnum prunifolium that was probably
20+ years old. It was the only one in the group; I had seen it bloom last year
and gathered seeds from it in the fall. A more knowledgeable person could have
advised him to leave that one; other bigger trees remained in the area. Just
the small things were cut down.
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| The Viburnum prunifolium last spring, now cut down |
I don’t mean to imply that areas should never be opened up
or that there isn’t good reason to thin out plants that exist in abundance in
order to bring order, light or diversity to an area. Red maple (Acer rubrum) lives in my yard with great exuberance. If I didn’t control most of the seedlings, I would soon
have very little else.
Here is what I would like to suggest to people that want to manage “wild” plants in their yards:
Here is what I would like to suggest to people that want to manage “wild” plants in their yards:
Learn – identify your plants. Learn what plants are native,
what plants aren’t native, what their names are and what their growth habits
are. The internet today provides wonderful resources for identifying plants.
You can upload pictures on “name that plant” forums, search for information on
plants you’ve identified, and get opinions from complete strangers on whether
the plant is good or bad!
Evaluate – once you identify what you have you can determine
what’s bad, what plants are over populated (like my red maples), which plants are
scarce (like that viburnum), and what’s going to be trouble for your rambling youngster (is that poison ivy?).
Act – once you’ve decided you want to remove some things, tag
things so that the wrong plants aren’t removed (you can buy a roll of flagging
tape at home improvement stores), use spray paint (or hoses or even ordinary
flour) to outline areas to be worked. Make labels for your plants so that you
remember what they are (you can use that same flagging tape as temporary labels
by writing on it with a sharpie, but make sure you don’t tag and flag at the
same time lest your “good” plants get removed!).
If you still need help – ask! Find your native plant society
or local garden club. Often more experienced members are kind enough to help
out. But don’t take action without research. I wince every time I walk by the house whose woods were thoroughly “cleared” of the uncommon native groundcover
known as ground cedar (Lycopodium
digitatum). It’s been 3 years – I don’t think it’s coming back.
