northeast-flora-and-fauna

Another invasive species of plant that thrives in much of my area is Wineberry (aka Japanese Wineberry aka Wine Raspberry), though this particular individual looks to be under attack by Japanese Honeysuckle , an invasive plant known to attack other plants . (My guess is that this won't end well for the Wineberry; Japanese Honeysuckle can kill hardier plants like young trees by squeezing them to death.) Wineberry is a type of raspberry related to blackberries and in the rose family  [1]. It was apparently brought here from Asia in hopes of creating hybrid raspberries for cultivation, but the tricky rapscallions gave their cultivators the slip and went wild, and now feral swaths of Wineberry can be found in many locations. (I'm thinking of 1 spot in particular at Washington Valley Park, not far from its Hawk Watch platform.) It's pretty easy to identify Wineberry. The red stems with sharp hairs and the way the underside of the leaves are much paler than the topside of the ...

With iNaturalist down - they say "iNat will be back on its feet/wings/fins/tentacles/pseudopodia as soon as possible" - I'll dip into one of my other pictures for today's topic. Like many places, Duke Farms has invasive plants that they'd prefer to replace with native ones. One of my volunteer assignments - Trail Steward - is involved in cutting back some of these plants. Though plants like Japanese Honeysuckle , Japanese Barberry , Burning Bush , and Wineberry get a fair amount of attention, Multiflora Rose is frequently our main target. Although sometimes we've replanted other stuff after removing the invasive ones, many times we just cut the invasives down and hope it gives other species the opportunity to replace the invasive ones. Below is a picture of some of the invasives back in July. My impression is that these get hauled to a part of the property closed to the public, and after getting good and dried out they mulch it up. The mulch is then used to ...