northeast-flora-and-fauna

Forget about Alien vs Predator , we have two aggressive invaders that battle it out throughout much of NJ: In one corner, from the wilds of China, Korea, and Japan, an especially thorny rose introduced as "the living fence", we have Multiflora Rose . In the other corner, also from Japan and eastern Asia originally introduced as an ornamental shrub and that provides a haven for ticks, we have Japanese Barberry . These are 2 of the most common and aggressive invasive shrubs [1] in this area. Some places may be dominated by one or the other, though a lot of times you'll see both plants crowding out our beneficial native plants.  At Washington Valley Park I saw the pair of shrubs both fighting for basically the same spot. At a glance you might not even recognize there are 2 separate plants here. Multiflora Rose and Japanese Barberry August 3, 2021 at Washington Valley Park Photo 149026850, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) As you get closer, you can see the vici...

Here's a wildflower that wasn't quite in bloom in the picture (from about a week and a half ago) but has mostly exploded with last week's warm weather. It's a small flower, but its prevalence and bright yellow flowerheads contrasting with their green leaves makes this one of the most noticeable early wildflowers. This is Lesser Celandine , an attractive but invasive spring wildflower. In many ways they have an unfair advantage over our native wildflowers. None of our main herbivores (deer, rabbits, woodchucks) will eat it, nor will any of our insects. They don't require pollination so they can emerge before most pollinators are around and they've got a lot of the sunlight resources to themselves. So this is there a wildflower that uses resources without contributing anything to the local environment, and crowds out a lot of local wildflowers that actually would provide benefits for our native herbivores and pollinators. Of course, we could probably unleash chemi...