which_chick | Japanese Barberry, again.

We're going to talk some more about Japanese Barberry. I know you're probably a little confused about how I can hate a shrubbery this much. But, Japanese Barberry is something we should all be interested in. It's probably relevant to your interests even if you don't know it yet.

If you like children OR dogs OR wildlife of all sorts...

You should probably be AGAINST Japanese Barberry.

If you DON'T like ticks and Lyme Disease...

You should probably be AGAINST Japanese Barberry.

The first thing to learn is to see. You have to learn to see before you can understand the problem. Perhaps you do not live in the woods and so you do not have a real good idea of what "woods" should look like. I don't live in "excellent" woods. I live in middling-quality second or third growth woods in south-central Pennsylvania, part of the Ridge-N-Valley part of the state. This is not "pristine" or "old growth" or anything super fancy like that. It's just woods.

This is what the woods looks like near my house in late March through mid-April. It's mostly brown. There's not a lot of visible green yet. If you're near a soggy section -- and we have a lot of soggy sections though they are not shown in this picture -- there is skunk cabbage being bright green. But otherwise? Lots of brown. Spicebush is flowering, tiny yellow puffballs of bright color. You'll have a couple of rue anemone, little flowers of early spring, up and at 'em. Maybe there's a violet or two in wetter areas that are a bit sheltered. Obvs, downy rattlesnake plantain is green, too. (It's green in January. Always green.) But the woods as a whole are brown. And this is what it SHOULD look like. This is normal. Mentally conceptualize this as normal.

Let us regard the next picture. Lo, here it is...

"Oh, that's nice, look, there are shrubberies turning green and it's getting to be spring."

NO. This picture was taken the EXACT SAME DAY as the first picture. Every single green thing you see in this picture is JAPANESE BARBERRY. Every single green shrubbery you see is WRONG and SHOULD NOT BE.

The native deciduous shrubs are not out and about yet. Yes, it's April 14. No, there is nothing much green yet. It's currently (evening of April 14) snowing in a Visible Accumulation sort of way with temp tonight of 30F. Perhaps April 14 is spring where you are, but it's still kind of cold in these parts.

The NATIVE green things in my woods right now that are shrub/tree style things with woody stems are as follows: native rhododendron, native mountain laurel, needle-evergreens (spruce, hemlock, cedar, pine), and american holly.

The non-native shrub/tree style things in my woods are green, which makes them really easy to see. Those would be invasive honeysuckle, japanese barberry, autumn olive, and multiflora rose. The honeysuckle, autumn olive, and multiflora are more edges-of-the-woods style things. They like sun. Japanese barberry likes sun but it will grow in shade. Rampantly.

So, look at the above picture again. Try to count how many wrong things are in that picture. Mmm. That is a "moderate" infestation level. You can still see the ground in a lot of places. The barberry coverage isn't 100% yet. It will be, if nothing is done, but it isn't YET.

Look at all that green. Understand that each green shrubbery is a Bad Thing that SHOULD NOT BE, a thing that shelters and increases the tick population. Each green shrubbery provides no food for wildlife -- EVEN NOW when the entire rest of the woods is brown, NOTHING IS EATING THE BARBERRY. It is immaculate and untouched and takes up space that should be occupied by native plants that have a place in the ecosystem.

This is learning to see. We are learning to see, here.

What the woods SHOULD look like is honestly a lot thicker (with understory shrubs and stuff) than my woods. We have a lot of deer that eat the hell out of native shrubs. I'd like more mountain laurel, more native azalea, more rhododendron. But, until I can get rid of the deer, that's not going to happen. (I am working with five hundred acres. We can't "fence individual plants" on any kind of a reasonable scale.) But best-case, locally, at this time of year, the woods should look like this:

Brown. MOSTLY BROWN. This is normal. This is correct. This is WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE.

And now that you know what "normal" is supposed to look like, regardeth the third picture, what I am now going to show you.

You know what the green is. We've covered this. You know.

(5-12-2020 UPDATE, I've been Quarantining With A Purpose over here...)

Almost everything you can see in this picture is dead barberry in piles (some of it is still green because I pulled it out today and it's not brown yet). The brown piles are piles of dead barberry. I'm working towards the right side of the frame and at the very right you can see a haze of green that I still need to do, but I have made Great Strides over here. :)

In other, somewhat related news, I bought a tool for removing invasive woody plants. It's like crowbar for shrubberies, kind of. The company that makes them will engrave whatever name you want on your tool, free with your order.

I went with Conan the Barberry-an.

(5-12-2020 UPDATE: It got to the office yesterday, so excited!)