Nature Notes - Invaders!

I am sharing this post with Nature Notes over at Ramblingwoods.com. I will start this post by saying, "Oops!" I wanted to show you these flowering white bushes! The flowers smell really nice.

I took these pictures and then went onto the internet to identify them. It took no time at all for me to determine that they were a type of honeysuckle. But, there are a lot of types... I did some more reading, and found out that ALL of the bush types are invasives from Asia, while the vine-y types are native.

I got some pictures of the stems/trunks. These are definitely the bush type, not the vine type. So, they are invasive. The problem with these is that they leaf up sooner than our native species and they shade everything so that nothing can grow under them. Adding insult to injury, they release toxin into the soil to further keep other plants away. They bare these red berries that birds like, so the birds "drop" seeds everywhere, and these are spreading in the Midwest. It is actually illegal to plant and/or transport some varieties of honeysuckle in some states.

On the subject of annoying plants...look at the vine I found on a stump behind the garage. When I was IDing that oriental honeysuckle vine a few weeks ago, the articles said that the way to tell it from poison ivy was that poison ivy vines had hair-like roots all along their vines. Bingo. Gotta warn the kids...