Piedmont Gardener

Seeds of two-winged silver bell contrasted against its fall leaf color

This past week, I attended the annual conference of the North Carolina Invasive Plant Council (NC-IPC). The continuing pandemic necessitated that the conference was virtual. The up side of that was that I didn’t have to travel or pay anything to attend. The down side was that I was thoroughly depressed by most of what I heard from the experts. This post summarizes the presentations given on the first day of the conference.

NOTE: To offer a little visual relief, I’m interspersing recent photos taken in my yard. They have nothing to do with the subject, except to serve as reminders of the beauty and diversity of native Southeastern Piedmont flora and fauna.

Most of the people who attend this conference about non-native invasive plants are professionals who deal with these plants daily as part of their jobs. Many of them work for conservation organizations that are trying to preserve special ecosystems and/or rare/endangered plants in preserves scattered across North Carolina. Some attendees are university students and professors who study related subjects, such as the impacts of non-native invasive plants on our native ecosystems. Some are associated with botanical gardens and plant nurseries. Some run small companies that specialize in invasive plant removal and habitat restoration. And some are just plain folks like me, who like to keep abreast of what invaders the professionals are most worried about and the methods they are using to combat non-native invasive plants.

Before attending the conference, I assumed that the NC-IPC was still a non-profit organization, so I sent them $20 to re-join the group. However, after the conference, I got a note from an officer in the group who thanked me for my donation and warned me it isn’t tax-deductible, because the group lost its non-profit status. He did not elaborate, but I’m guessing that this all-volunteer organization fell into disarray during the pandemic, and necessary paperwork wasn’t filed. I’m sure they aren’t the only organization still struggling with such issues. The NC-IPC officer did note that the group is working to regain its non-profit status. I wish them well.

Bottlebrush grass

Attendees were assured that all virtual presentations were recorded and will be made available to us. I hope so. I missed bits of some of them, and others showed relevant URLs in slides that I didn’t have time to jot down. I’m hoping they’ll simply put them all up on their web site, so that everyone can benefit from the presentations.

While we wait for the recordings to appear, here’s my summary of what I learned on the first day of the conference. I apologize to presenters in advance for any inaccuracies in my summaries. It is hard to take notes, watch slides, and investigate URLs simultaneously.

Exotic Invasive Seed Bank

The professor from UNC-Asheville who gave this talk demonstrated some out-of-the-box thinking that I appreciated. She spoke about Living Web Farms, an organization in three locations in the Asheville area. She described the group as experts on the cutting edge of all aspects of organic, sustainable gardening/living, and she mentioned a product they use, called EM-1, which is a microbial inoculant. As best as I can tell, EM-1 is a concentrated soup of fungi and bacteria that, when diluted and applied to soils, stimulates impressive vigor in plants. The professor said the presentation she heard about it made claims about EM-1 that included elimination of body odor, among other things. She did not provide details.

However, she did apply EM-1 to the soil in her established vegetable garden and got what she considered to be very beneficial results – improved vigor, more fruit production, disease resistance – everything a gardener wants. It also supposedly provides improved seed germination. This clever professor decided to test that last claim by applying EM-1 to test beds of seeds of plants, such as alfalfa. In some plots, she added a bit of sugar or molasses to the mix, because, she said, sugar often improves seed germination. This was news to me.

Will this year’s fall broccoli crop grow even more impressively if I add EM-1?

She discovered that EM-1 most definitely improved germination rates of seeds in her test plots. She wondered what would happen if she added a higher-than-recommended concentration to seed beds. The alfalfa germinated at impressive rates, but the radicle – the root tip – died, which meant the entire plant died. This led the professor to wonder if applying this higher concentration of EM-1 to beds full of seeds of non-native invasive plants would cause these species to also germinate and die. I won’t bore you with the details, but it appeared likely that she did succeed in encouraging germination of weed seeds at high rates, and those seedlings then died.

Why does this matter to those of us attempting to control invasive plants? Because seeds of plants like Japanese stiltgrass can remain viable in the soil for 7-10 years. However, if one had a way to encourage all those seeds to germinate and die simultaneously, it might be possible to exhaust their seed banks (seeds lurking in soil), thereby reducing populations of these pernicious species.

I think this is a gosh darn clever notion. I especially like it because no poisons of any kind were necessary. I hope she pursues and refines this research so that “regular folks” can try this approach. Meanwhile, I have ordered a bottle of EM-1 to test out on my vegetable garden. I’ll let you know what happens.

Bird Friendly Landscaping

The woman who spoke next is the current president of my local Audubon chapter. This local group has been advocating successfully for restoring native plants to landscapes in order to improve habitat for native wildlife, especially birds. The group’s very professional Web site is jam-packed with wonderful information on this subject. Readers interested in learning more should start here.

Using Imazamox to Control Japanese Knotweed

I confess I sort of snoozed through this man’s talk. If the subject is of interest to you, check the NC-IPC Web site for videos of the conference when they appear.

The Skewed Logic of Invasive Defenders

The man who gave this talk is an active conservationist who has founded local groups to restore/preserve native ecosystems in areas where he has lived. He is a very thoughtful, articulate guy, and feels obliged to argue with folks who write/speak in defense of non-native invasive species. Whole books have been written about this. These invader-supporters advocate a live-and-let-live approach, saying non-native invasive species have a right to be here even if that means entire native ecosystems perish as a consequence.

Spicebush fall color

The speaker’s presentation described the most common arguments invasive-defenders make, and then identified the fallacies in those arguments. He also recounted how he has debated – in writing and in person – with some of these invasive-lovers with mixed results. In Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy, one of the appendixes in the book offers counter-arguments to those who advocate on behalf of non-native invasive species. It saddens me that this is necessary.

NC-IPC’s Ficaria verna Program (as a model for others)

The common name for this invasive plant is Fig Buttercup. It is a relatively recent invader to our area, notorious for overwhelming native wetland habitats. It has a pretty flower, which is how it got here. The presenter described how the NC-IPC has allotted money for an education campaign about this plant in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, where the invader is beginning to get a foothold. For those of you who live in this area, check out the application (Find Fig Buttercup Near You!) they’ve built to help you figure out how close this invader is to your property. This link from the Duke Forest web site describes this invader and why it is a problem. Please keep an eye out for this invader wherever you live. It is tricky to eradicate.

Invasive Plants in Urban Forests: Effects on Forest Structure and Arthropod Communities

The woman who gave this presentation described her Ph.D. thesis, as indicated in the title. I’ve found that newly minted Ph.D. earners are often unable to summarize their work. After all, they’ve been immersed in the minutia of their subject matter for years. They probably dream about it. It is thus understandable that this young woman began by describing in exhaustive detail the methodology she employed in her study. Forgive me, but it was lunch time by then and I was hungry. It was the last presentation for the day, so I left the meeting to eat lunch. I figure I’ll zip through the video to her conclusions when that video becomes available. I’ll be surprised if she did not find a reduction in overall arthropod species, and probably a change in species proportions, because that’s what usually happens when invasive species disrupt native ecosystems. But I’ll check when the video becomes available.

Thus ended the first day of presentations. I found the presentations during the second day to be, in order of presentation, really annoying, interesting and inspiring, interesting, and very depressing. I offer details in the blog post that follows this one. I’ll post it tomorrow.

Yesterday’s moonrise against a sky still tinged with color from sunset