By MIKE JAMES - The Independent
PEDRO, Ohio — The flowerbed outside the ranger station at Lake Vesuvius appears to be choked with weeds.
But look a little closer, study the helpful sign posted at one end, and learn that the waist-high tangle of green is a sampling of fauna native to the Appalachian foothills.
Video by John Flavell/The Independent
There is St. John’s wort, wild blue phlox, black-eyed Susan, boneset, Joe Pye weed, wild geranium and blazing star. Some of the above were considered useful as folk remedies — the black-eyed Susan for snake bite, the Joe Pye weed for typhus. Though it is still early in the season, some of them will burst out in the summer with colorful flowers.
If U.S. Forest Service botanist Chad Kirschbaum has his way, there will be more beds of native plants around the ranger station. He is developing an interpretive trail behind the station that will include native plants, shrubs and trees. And like a modern-day Johnny Appleseed he is sowing seeds around the forest.
Planting native species at a ranger station situated in the middle of the Wayne National Forest may appear to be a coals-to-Newcastle exercise. Not at all, according to Kirschbaum. In fact, with the help of a dedicated corps of volunteers, he is constantly working to keep the forest green with native fauna.
The work is necessary in part because of what botanists call invasive species — plants introduced for ornamental or utilitarian purposes that got out of control. Such plants — kudzu, garlic mustard, honeysuckle, multiflora rose — tend to spread widely and choke out other vegetation.
On Friday, three of his regular volunteers showed up on an overcast morning to transplant some seedlings.
There was Heather Hardy, who teaches science at nearby Rock Hill High School, Jack Humphrey, a retired high school biology teacher and Marion Davis, retired from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Last fall, Kirschbaum had collected a variety of seeds and planted them over the winter in trays. Then it was just a matter of providing adequate light and water while they sprouted. “It’s pretty easy to grow any plant you find out here from seed,” he said.
It was the volunteers’ job to transplant the seedlings into larger containers. They had several trays of big bluestem, which is a prairie grass, black-eyed Susan, and rattlesnake master, so called because some native American tribes used it as an antidote for rattlesnake venom.
Once transplanted, the seedlings will grow for a few more weeks and then Kirschbaum will put them in the ground. He also has bins full of a mixture of various native plant seeds he has collected.
There are several potential uses for the seeds and plants. One is on land where volunteers and forest service workers have removed invasive species. On one recent day, a crew pulled enough garlic mustard to fill 125 plastic garbage bags.
Non-native species compete aggressively for space, light and nutrients. Some secrete chemicals into the earth that actually inhibit root growth in other plants. And the invasive species typically don’t provide food supplies for animals.
“Most of them were good plants gone bad,” Kirschbaum said. Only in the last 20 years or so has the notion of management caught on.
Other uses for the transplants include re-establishing vegetation on land cleared for trails and re-planting areas burned out by brush fires and forest fires.
Also, native plants attract pollinators, the insects and birds that spread pollen among plants used for food, fiber, medicines and other products.
That is particularly important in an era where pollinators are declining because of improper use of insecticides and herbicides, poor habitat management, climate change and competition from the non-native species.
The forest service doesn’t provide much in the budget for the planting, and that is where the volunteers come in, Kirschbaum said. They provide much-needed manpower he just can’t afford to pay for.
Not to mention the awareness factor: not that many people realize, for instance, that the honeysuckle twining up their back fence is an import from the Orient, and its sweet-scented blossoms will overwhelm competing plants.
But once the volunteers return with sore arms, legs and backs from a morning of pulling up plants, they develop an understanding of the challenge and are ready to spread the word.
Hardy, for instance, has a native species plot that her students care for at the high school. In fact, they did such a good job of it that a newly hired custodian mistook it for weeds and mowed it down. She has since replaced it. “If we don’t do this, when our kids get older, the landscape won’t be the same and they’ll miss out,” she said.
MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.
