Yatsevitch Forest Invasive Plant Workday

Gale Tobbe plucks up tiny buckthorn plants, roots and all (photo: B. Charpentier)

A group of volunteers met recently at the Michael & Claudia Yatsevitch Forest in Cornish and Plainfield to work on removing an exotic invasive plants from the forest understory.  The offending plants are common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica) and glossy buckthorn (Rhamnus frangula), two invasive shrubs from Europe and Asia that are threatening the native plant community at the Yatsevitch Forest.  The workday was a continuation of work that has happened previously here- last year many larger buckthorns were girdled (the bark was cut through all the way around the trunk) in effort to kill them and reduce the great number of seeds that were being produced from these mature trees.  This year we concentrated on the smaller seedlings coming up on the forest floor, hand pulling them one by one and getting up the roots as well.

Left: girdled buckthorn stem from last year's workday; Right: Fred Tobbe with a handful of buckthorn (photos: B.Charpentier)

Control of invasive plants is a never-ending battle, and one that the Forest Society can afford to undertake only in areas where exotic invasives pose a direct threat to rare or uncommon native species.  This is the case at the Yatsevitch Forest, where the rich mesic soils and geology provide the perfect habitat for certain native plants that are rarely found elsewhere in the state.   As we headed out of the forest on our recent Yatsevitch workday, many volunteers noticed that there were thousands of buckthorn plants on abutting properties here too- unless everyone else also controls the invasives on their land, we'll never be able to rest on our laurels (or loppers) and claim victory over the invasive plants.  It's not a simple problem, and solutions will likewise be complicated and require lots of trial and error.  I'm happy that we have a great army of volunteer stewards to call upon for projects like these when we need them!

The crew at Yatsevitch Forest (photo: B.Charpentier)