Lawrence, Rivka and others, Thanks for this discussion about autumn
olive. One of my earliest childhood memories is climbing a tree in
my backyard to see balled-in-burlap Bradford pears blooming, by the
hundreds, at the once venerable Fruitland Nursery. Growing up
playing in that nursery informed my imagination about what could be
grown in the SE US. In the decades since, I have seen impenetrable,
thorny, pear thickets develop on contiguous, open public land.
Eleagnus umbellata and Eleagnus pungens were planted in neat nursery
rows, the only place they occurred on thousands of nursery acres.
With my children last week, I visited other contiguous land, along
the Savannah River and Augusta Canal. What was once semi-open land
along the river has morphed into numerous, impenetrable thickets of
both of these Eleagnus, crowding out a rich diversity of native
species. Multiple other non-natives are there, but none as invasive
as these Eleagnus.
A douglas fir forest I biked in during grad school had a small
thicket of himalayan blackberry around 1985. When I returned for a
sabbatical in 2000, the forest understory was entirely taken over by
this very vigorous and thorny blackberry. Was alarmed to see this
summer a similar looking, non-native blackberry thicket, taking over
a pasture hillside. The farmer says he's mowing and spraying to
eradicate it.
For the record, I have defended on this list the planting of
wineberry, a naturalized asian raspberry that is much better behaved
than the Eleagnus above. And I have defended the planting of goumi,
another Eleagnus that Steven mentioned. And when I've promoted
edible selections of Poncirus trifoliata, someone on this list warned
about the thickets of this plant on their land in central NC;
something I'd never seen when I lived in Durham and wandered widely.
And I've posted the last couple of years about the autumn olive fruit
we pick and sell in quantity at market; the best of our selections.
I live in SW Virginia now. Though some of the conclusions are
exaggerated, see this article about the serious threat of autumn
olive to open land in this region.
http://www2.tricities.com/news/2011/sep/26/autumn-olive-strangles-agriculture-ar-1336608/
practice done in the 60 and 70s. While looking for 18 months for a
farm to purchase, we passed on those overtaken with invasive plants
such as autumn olive. We did buy a farm 3.5 years ago, half open
and half wooded. Autumn olive and multiflora rose are the primary
woody plants we battle on our 30+ acres that are not easily mowed.
Regardless of slope, aspect, shale vs. limestone soils, full sun to
shade, pH or mineral differences from soil tests, autumn olive and
multiflora rose inhibit walking through significant portions of our
farmland. Sizeable plants are tough to pull or dig out, and root
pieces resprout. Where slope allows, we then mow and graze heavily.
Neighbors recommend powerful herbicides that have worked for them,
something we've not done yet. We're at 1800 ft. Since 1992 we've
watched a state-owned homestead at over 3000 ft that has been overrun
with autumn olive, from a small planting near the cemetery. The
invasion was set once the state no longer committed the funds to dig,
mow or spray the seedlings on so many acres multiple times a year.
I trust the above does not appear 'hysterical'; what I am trying to
document is the variety of locales where autumn olive, once
established, has invaded contiguous land. Though I don't recall
thickets of Eleagnus when I lived and wandered near Durham NC in the
late 80s, a Google search just found multiple pics of autumn olive
and the related E. pungens, growing on wooded edges and open areas
in Durham and Orange counties, NC. Including a thicket under a
powerline, reportedly started by birds dropping seed.
Spent most of my life as a grower in suburbia enjoying a
wide-variety of non-native fruits. Now as a farmer, and one who
teaches selective foraging on my own and adjacent lands, I give more
weight to precautions about certain exotic plants and their
unforeseen spread to lands not intensively managed by hand labor.
It could be worse, I had a student from PA who wrote about plum pox,
resulting in many homeowners having to destroy plums and related
fruits in their yards. And have read about citrus disease measures
in FL, with similar search and destroy missions carried out in
suburban yards.
Thanks for the discussion; fun to debate appropriate spread of
fruiting plants.
Grace and peace, Richard Moyer SW VA
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