On another side note, I see that this is not a list. Oops.
Buckthorn is a scourge. I spent half a day on Tuesday removing buckthorn from Quarry Hill. Several people from my department went. There were some experts who used chainsaws to hack and slash the buckthorn plants (or large buckthorn trees). And we put the buckthorn branches into large piles that were for the wood chipper (they don’t burn it…odd?)
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They have a “plan”. I say this with reservation. Step 1 was remove all the large buckthorn (this is feasible). Step 2 was to removal all the small buckthorn plants. They don’t have an action plan for Step 2 yet. But if you live here, you need to stay on top of your buckthorn problem.
What do we have against buckthorn? It kills everything else. It was brought over from Europe because it makes great hedges. Other plants keep buckthorn in check in Europe. But it has no predators here because every part of this plant gives animals (and humans) a stomach badness problem.
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When we got done, there really wasn’t much left other than some mature trees. There was very little undergrowth, other than small buckthorn plants. The other bad things we piled up were honey suckle and grapevines. Bad bad bad. But not as bad as buckthorn.
Tags: buckthorn, quarry hill