It's actually a really cold early spring day.

And, you know, in our region, we often really look forward to the woods greening up and spring arriving.

But there are some interesting stories about what greens up first and why and if it's good or not so good.

I'm at Rum Village Nature Center Rum Village Park in South Bend, Indiana, and I am going to take a look at some of the plants that we might have in our area that are foolers there, bright green in early spring, but there's a little bit of a mixed message with that.

So Gary Herrington is the director here at Rum Village Park.

Hi, Gary.

Hi, Evie How are you?

I'm great.

So look at this cheerful green.

And like I when I look across the woods, there's not a lot of green.

The trees aren't green yet, but this is green.

This is green.

This is.

You know, it is a fooler because the pitch is about the very first thing you're going to see in the woods this time of the year.

That is vibrant green is invasive honeysuckle before anything else is green.

In our woods, you'll see this honeysuckle.

And, it's really a shame because this stuff does not belong as we know, right?

Really?

This stuff belongs on the other side of the planet.

It's native to, Asia, but not downtown South Bend, which we're very close to right now.

The bad thing about this plan, of course, it has the tendency to take over, a good portion of wherever it's growing, whether it's the woods or roadside along the Saint Joseph River.

It's highly invasive, takes over, will block, all the spring rolls and wildflowers that are growing along here right now and doesn't give them a chance to, get sunlight and do their thing.

It really does change and has changed the character of our woodlands as we know it.

So it is a problem.

Now, the interesting story here at Rum Village is in this area.

I mean, in general, I've seen much higher infestations in other areas, but you've been trying to diligently treat it, get rid of it.

And I can see down here at the base of this one.

So this one's been cut at some time right there.

It's all been hacked off.

We have cut it.

Yes.

Okay.

And then you treat it with some kind of herbicide or we do we treat it.

And this one has not been treated, because this plant is very resilient.

Because we didn't properly treat it.

It's coming right back.

Right back.

That's it's so aggressive.

All right.

So let's help people learn how to identify it even this early.

First of all, it's really green.

And it's not very, very green in the woods is green.

All right.

How else can we identify it.

So it grows up.

The leaves grow opposite one another okay.

And the twigs right there.

Yes.

Yep.

Instead of staggered down the stem.

Right.

They're right opposite each other okay.

The margins, the edges of the leaves.

They don't have any teeth.

So they're smooth margins on the edge.

There.

Okay.

And the leaves will get a little bigger than this.

They will go.

This is just.

It's just now emerging.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

So not any teeth on the leaves.

All right.

And I always see, like, if the light's right, there's just this little, like, almost pink edge to the those, leaf margins or the leaf edges as it comes out just a little.

It's almost like it's outlined to me.

So that's good.

All right.

What else can we look for?

How about the bark?

The bark?

The bark.

Depending on what species it is, it's oftentimes it's kind of, shaggy looking in appearance.

We kind of scrubby looking.

Yeah.

And we can see an example right over there.

Yeah.

Like this branch right here.

Yeah.

And it's I like straight right.

And.

Yes.

Yeah.

This one is kind of stripe.

Yeah.

Okay.

And appearance.

All right.

And I know one other thing that folks might be able to identify their shrubs in their woods.

Is this the center of the twig?

Right.

So yes.

It's okay if I break this.

Absolutely.

I take the whole thing.

Right, because it's just to be removed.

Okay.

All right.

So I just snipped that off and it looks hollow.

It is.

Okay.

So most, we often refer to that as the pith or the center part of the twig.

And this is a hollow pith in honeysuckle.

And it's another great identifier.

Right.

Like yes.

Opposite branching opposite leaves, maybe the striped bark usually.

How about the growth pattern.

Like kind of clumpy right.

It does it does it.

It can clusters.

It grows in clusters and it will grow out of control.

It will.

And if you see a plant like this growing.

Yeah.

And it's growing in a bush and you see lots and lots of them in your backyard, chances are it's not the native variety which doesn't have a hollow pith.

And it does have the teeth along the margins.

That's how you know, it's it's the good stuff.

Okay.

As in a native honeysuckle, the native honeysuckle, which is not very common.

We should just let folks know.

We hardly ever see it.

We hardly ever see it.

And it doesn't grow out of control like this.

Guys, these guys do which which take over an entire area and just, will deny, any sunlight to the plants that are desirable on the forest floor.

What is the ecological advantage to non-native, invasive of flushing out so early?

I mean, like, why, you know, it's cold.

It's like in the 30s today.

Right?

But what's the advantage to the plan of getting green so quickly?

Well, one thing is it gets a head start on everybody else, right?

Because everybody else is still kind of asleep.

So these guys are getting, sunlight and, they get a chance for just photosynthesize before anything else is really having a good chance to do that.

Okay.

All right.

So in many ways, they just outcompete everything.

Flush out early they do.

And then, thick growth shading out everything else which, makes it really challenging for anything else to grow underneath.

So.

Right.

So another plant that I can think of that I see really, really early and I don't know if you have any here, but I recently saw some on a hike is something that sometimes we call wild garlic field field garlic whatever.

It kind of looks like chives.

Yes.

Sometimes people get it in their lawn.

They do like sprouts up, right?

They have that really oniony garlicky smell.

Yes.

That's how, dominant is now in our area.

Unfortunately, it's just like everywhere.

Yes.

In the woods in our lawns So it flushes out early.

And, you know, that makes me think too lawns, like, wow, what about lawns?

Yes.

People don't even realize that, dandelions, for example.

People think, well, I've got dandelions in the backyard, so what?

Well, and they, they are a huge problem this time of the year, but do they ever realize that they're not native?

And one of the reasons they're so abundant is because they don't belong here, and there's no natural means of controlling them.

Just like, the honeysuckle, they come from the other side of the planet.

They're Eurasian.

Just like, other species that are lawn pests, like crabgrass.

Those grow in abundance, they grow out of control.

There's no natural means of controlling them.

And that's why they kind of go ballistic in people's yards, because there's just no natural means of controlling them.

Imagine that happened.

What happens in your lawn happening here in our woods or in other places in this Michiana area?

These plants are growing out of control, unchecked, so bad enough to have that happen in your lawn where you probably are controlling that, it only gets controlled in our woods without, only with a lot of effort, time, effort and trouble and cost and cost.

Right.

It does.

Like when I think of land resource managers, it takes a lot of money, personnel, time to remove this kind of stuff.

So but I do want to circle back to the lawns because, you know, when we think about lawns, period in general, period, it's all non-native, right?

Blue content that's not even native.

Right.

So it's a good reminder.

West lawn plant some native plants.

Yes.

That's a great idea.

And, get rid of some of that.

But there's a huge national movement to do just that.

Let me just say yes.

Well, how about if we walk a little bit more and maybe we can find just another?

Maybe we'll find some natives, which will be great.

Maybe we'll find, another invasive out there to see, what it looks like right now.

All right, let's do it.

Okay.

Well, now, this is kind of interesting.

It's not very leafy, but the stems are getting kind of a green cast right here.

Yes.

So, what is this?

This is Euonymus.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Not native.

Not native.

No.

And it has these interesting wings on the stems.

They do have the rather distinct, aren't they?

They are winged Euonymus.

But it has another name.

So popular landscaping Bush.

Right.

Burning bush.

Burning bush.

Yes.

Striking red color in the fall.

Beautiful red color in the fall.

But, gosh, one of those guys.

Unfortunately, that is not native.

And this is probably a plant here in the woods that probably got planted by a bird, maybe eating the seeds, dropping the seeds out here.

But probably.

But when we have these kinds of shrubs in our home landscape, we don't think of it.

But it's really easy for birds to transport the seeds to a wilder area, and then it starts to take over and look at look how thick it is here, right?

Like there's so many stems here, all of that winged Euonymus.

Yes.

That's amazing.

And we probably had a large one here that we probably removed in the past.

Okay.

And it's suckering.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's what a well I would guess.

But yes.

Just another invasive that we just don't want in the area.

We don't want the area.

If you got one in your yard, yank it out and plant something native, it'll be beautiful and better for all the woods health around us.

So all right, let's see what else we can go find.

Okay.

Well, Gary, now here's another case of a non-native that's pretty green and has flushed a lot of growth.

I mean, the good news here is that we've got some native wildflowers.

We got Cutleaf toothwort.

Yes we do.

All right.

So that's native but look what.

So what's this what's this culprit.

We've got garlic mustard coming in.

We've got rosettes and we've got, plants that are going to be coming in.

Are those rosettes are this this year's kids may be coming in.

Yeah.

So we should explain.

It's a biennial.

So, yes.

One year, it's kind of just like a little green rosette.

And in some places where infestations are thick, you just have a carpet of those little rosettes.

And then next year they, they flower, right.

They do.

Okay.

And they flower boy do they ever flower.

Yeah.

And in this particular area, it's kind of an ongoing battle trying to keep these guys in control.

Because garlic mustard of course is highly invasive.

Yeah.

And so eventually what happens is if the infestation gets too heavy, the garlic mustard crowds out the natives, right?

Yes.

And hence the problem.

Yeah.

And so if we have if a blanket of this, good bye to the native guys and hello to these guys that we really don't want around.

We don't want they don't belong here.

Yep yep yep.

Okay.

All right.

Well, another good, another good one to keep an eye out.

If folks have this on their yards, what can they do?

Yes.

Well, the best bet is just to pull it right out of the ground.

And what we do here is what you're supposed to do everywhere in this area.

Pull it, bag it, and get rid of it.

Okay?

Yep.

It's very resilient.

So if we just put it back on the ground again, they have a tendency to turn right up.

And especially when they're ready to go to sea, they will go to seed and we have hundreds and we have thousands and thousands of seeds if we don't dispose of that properly.

Right, right, right, right, right.

Okay.

So it's actually one good thing about it being green early, early, early in the spring is we can see it and identify it and pull it.

It's usually this time of year pretty easy to pull.

Yes it is.

All right.

Great.

Well thanks for showing us this additional invasive that sprouts out pretty quickly.

And remember you can find your own outdoor elements when you visit area parks and natural areas.

We'll see you soon.