If you have native habitat, you have invasives and non-native plants. Managing them can be confusing and time consuming because a “one size fits all” approach doesn’t necessarily work. And when time becomes contrained, as happens with life, we need to know how to triage these without increasing them.  I deal with this by learning about their biology. While there are plenty of “fact sheets” out there, seldom do I find one that has all the information I want. So, I create my own using various sources. I’m behind on getting these written up but will be working to remedy that in the coming months.  I hope my work on this is helpful to you, but please share your experience and successes! We learn best when we’re learning from each other and asking tons of questions.

I’m certain this list of non-natives will never be completed!

There are new invasive arriving to destroy our habitats regularly. Because of this, monitoring is critical. It’s also time consuming and if you aren’t familiar with the various plants, it’s easy to spend time managing the wrong ones. To that end, I created a listing of the weeds and invasives that folks in this area generally encounter. This ranks them from 1-3 with 1 being an invasive that needs immediate attention to 3 being weeds. This listing also explains why is it considered a 1, 2, or 3 and provides a treatment method that is known to be effective.

Additionally, not all invasives are equal; those that are the most dangerous are those that alter their environment, either by allelopathic chemicals or another alteration of soil chemistry, such as nitrogen fixing.

Common St. John’s wort – Hypericum perfolatum