Weed Warriors Support Smith Restoration
During an early October workday at SVT’s Smith Conservation Land in Littleton, a group of Weed Warrior volunteers got down in the dirt to dig out the roots of Asian bittersweet. Their efforts will prevent this pernicious vine from resprouting and strangling other vegetation.
It may be hard to see in the photo, but these diligent volunteers dug out some exceptionally long roots. Thank you!
These and other Weed Warriors have played a big part in our efforts to restore the high-quality habitats at Smith. The Smith land has great conservation values, but they are being compromised by aggressive invasives like bittersweet. The Smith land also has a large stand of red pine and European tamarack trees, neither of which are native.
SVT has used a variety of tactics to remove the invasives: repeated cutting, root extraction, hand pulling, and smothering. We are also using a limited amount of herbicides targeted only to the invasive plants, including some spot treatments this past September. Our efforts have been having an effect, and we will continue to work with Weed Warriors to manually control the bittersweet.
Over time, we expect that native trees such as sugar maple, oaks, and black cherry will fill the forest canopy, while the understory will abound with maple-leaf viburnum and winterberry shrubs as well as ebony spleenwort ferns and wildflowers like wild columbine, starflower, striped wintergreen, and white aster.
The September treatments were made possible in part by grants from the Community Foundation of North Central Massachusetts and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.