Invasives, good or bad

[150 Class]

I really like playing with habitat improvement, mostly for the wildlife and mostly for the deer. I plan to do some battle with some invasive species, especially at one of the properties that I hunt and have permission to lead this battle. But, I do have some questions. Are these invasives really that bad or not? I have my opinions on all of them but think purist attitudes might play into the push to eradicate some of these non-natives. Do I eradicate or leave them as is?

• Mutiflora Rose – Hard to control and get rid of. Deer and other wildlife really seem to like it. Others on here have said how good it is to have around.
• Honeysuckles – Prolific but again, provides good forest understory cover. Competes with native plants but the wildlife seems to like the cover that it provides. Is it a good browsing food source? Does it prevent other better plants and trees from getting established.
• Black Locust – Another fast spreader. This one seems to do little good for the habitat and might not even be an invasive but I am going to win the battle against this one and plant better tree plantings to fill the spots where it has taken over. What is the best way to win the battle against these trees?

I know there are many others but these are what I am going after at one place this year. Do I battle them or leave alone? Are they battles that can be won?

 

[TimberPig]

MFR is pretty easy to control, not so sure you could totally erraticate it though due to the seeds. Since MFR is good cover I dont kill much of it unless its in the way of something better. A back pack sprayer and either Round-up or 2-4D has killed it for me. I sprayed some MFR last year with Crossbow herbicide while killing Osage trees and it toasted the MFR almost overnight and definately worked better than the other two herbicides. I was using 2oz Crossbow to a gal of water, you can get it at Theisens or Tractor Supply for about $70/gal, cheaper if you buy 2&1/2 gals at a time.

I dont have any experience with the other two.

 

[dbltree]

I don't have the link handy but MFR is being hit with a disease that may wipe it out in the next 5 years...so you may want to concentrate on the other two.

Farmland QDM has been fighting Amur Honeysuckle...bad bad stuff if it's the same as yours. I'd get rid of it if you can.

I think it's safe to say that you can kill all the locust trees in sight...and they'll be back...dang things!

I kill em whenever I can but it's a losing battle. I tip em over for quail habitat...little fellas are safe under that thorny mess!

 

[FarmlandQDM]

Mutiflora Rose ... it is very easy to control with timely prescribed fire and it is only moderately shade tolerant so it doesn't commonly invade thick timber. I feel it is a good invasive to have on a property, it's a good food source and great bedding habitat, but from what I am seeing I fear the rosetta disease might wipe most of it out.

Black Locust ... it is a native invasive tree that IMO does not contribute alot to wildlife but it is also easy to control with Tordon and timely prescribed burns. A good one to get rid of but an easy one to control.

Honeysuckles ... I am most familiar with amur honeysuckle or bush honeysuckle, and this is one non-native, extremely invasive species I fear will have a dramatic impact on Iowa's oak forest in the future. Although deer will eat it and use the thick cover it provides for a bedding area, if you value oak timber I would make eradicating this species a top priority for any land manager. The photo below shows what amur honeysuckle looks like during the summer months ...

It is a very prolific seed producer with white blossoms that develop red berrys that hold on into the fall. It also tends to hold green leaves often into December which gives it a tremendous advantage over most other plant species. This species can produce thousands of very shade tolerant seedlings each year.

The photo above shows an open area of brome grass under the shade of a large bur oak with established amur honeysuckle all around the opening. One bur oak seedling is growing in the right front corner of the photo. Last years seeds from the two patches of honeysuckle have produced many seedlings growing under the canopy of the bromegrass ...

These honeysuckle seedlings will emerge from the canopy of brome next spring and begin shading the grass out. The following year they will overtop the young oak seedling and begin to starve it from sunlight. In a short time honeysuckle can develop into mature stands that choke out all other plant life under them. This not only creates an unproductive monoculture but because honeysuckle has a very shallow root system, erosion begins to develop into a problem with the lack of deep rooted vegetation to stabilize the soil.

This process can be seen in many of the forested areas near St. Louis, MO and it is starting to show up in southern Iowa as well.

Armur Honeysuckle is also very difficult to control without repeated herbicide applications at considerable expense. Although it does not deal well with prescribed fire, once it is established it is very difficult to carry a fire through it with enough heat to sufficiently kill it. The thick foilage doesn't allow for any other growth underneath that would produce fuel and the small green leaves usually fall late enough in the year that most overstory trees have aleady dropped their leaves, which allows the honeysuckle leaves to fall over them covering what fuel you may have with a moist blanket that rarely dries out enough to carry a fire. Prescribed fire is more lethal on shrubs once they have leafed out. Honeysuckle tends to leaf out early, relatively quick, and develops a dense canopy that will hold moisture in the understory fuel adding to the challenge of an affective burn.

Well if you just wanted an opinion I probably gave more info than you asked for but honeysuckle is a bigger problem for our future generations than most landowners realize.

 

[150 Class]

Thanks for the replies. Here is the link for the rose rosetta desease. Click here. I think I may just let mother nature do its thing on this one for a few years.

The honeysuckle is as you describe. It is very prolific and is everywhere. I fear this will be a very tough one for me to fight but I plan to go after it. It had green leaves well into December. The neighbor to the south of this property has it even worse so I will have to see if they will allow me to work on theirs as well.

Some of the black locust is pretty good sized already. While eradicating it, I see that it is good for firewood so I won't have to scrap it all.