Oriental bittersweet
Anyone know this stuff? It's a woody, vining plant that will take over the vegetation in the area. Our yard has this stuff. I went to search the internet for it once, and the very first hit off of Yahoo was a page sponsored by the Town of Newtown, CT. That's less than 5 miles from Oxford, so it's most likely a local phenomenon.
Of course, if you ever want to see it in action, travel down I-84 between Waterbury and Danbury, and then hit I-684 in New York down to the city itself through Westchester County. The bittersweet sends out new growth in pairs, the 2 shoots intertwine themselves for support, and go up, up, up the nearest trees, and then spread over to more trees up at the top. Then the vines choke those trees to death, and move on. Last fall along both of those highways we saw what looks like giant nests of the bittersweet vines all at the top of the trees. Small trees have no chance.
In fact, last summer we first noticed the bittersweet crawling up our house onto our deck (elevated off the kitchen, above the garage in the back), and taking over a young 12-foot tree. We had to pull all the vines down, and then noticed this stuff was responsible for a lot of young trees being fallen over in the immediate periphery of the wooded area between our house and the neighbors'. So it's been an ongoing fight. Part of the problem is that the bittersweet gets buddy-buddy with poison ivy. In fact, we misidentified large poison ivy roots as bittersweet, and Erika had to go on prednisone late last fall.
This year, the bittersweet is much less, and we do enjoy seeing new growth turn brown as we identify the roots on the ground that it's sprouting out of, and both cut it, and then spray it with concentrated poison ivy killer (what is that, triclopyr?) However, the dead vines from last year are twisted around trees and accumulated about 30 feet off the ground, so it's not always possible to pull them all down. We may need to rent a cherry-picker or hire a tree service. If we didn't have poison ivy, it would be easy to just ask them to mulch it all and spread it around the back yard, but really, who wants mulch that makes you break out in an itchy rash, huh?
6 comments:
That's a crazy thing! I haven't seen poison ivy before except for in pictures, I doubt I would remember what it looked like...while using it to wipe my ass with in the forest!
My mom tells a good story about her friend convincing her to play in a patch of it when they were like 8 or 9 years old, and they both ended up bedridden for a week, suffering.
(figures, my dad doesn't break out from poison ivy....guess whose gene I got on that one)
Where does it come from Brian? Is it like an introduced species?
Cheers
David
Hi David
Here's a page all about this insidious plant!
Click here
Oh yeah. Bittersweet. We had it up in the area of Connecticut where I grew up too. My Gram used to cut it when it was "in bloom" in the Autumn, and use it in seasonal floral arragements.
We don't wait that long. We were floating in the pool and noticed some working its way up a tree, so Erika put on her gardening gloves less than an hour later and started attacking!
Post a Comment