Under Your Maple Tree — Spring Ephemerals
Get to know the plants that might pop up in your sugarbush each spring. We’ll cover some of our favorite native plants and their benefits. We’ll also cover some invasive plants and discuss effective ways to manage them.
Filmed on Facebook LIVE on June 5, 2020
Table of Contents
2:25 — Basswood Trees
2:50 — Southern Mesic Forest definition
4:10 — Why Spring is a great time to identify plants in the sugarbush
4:50 — Tartarian Honeysuckle (invasive)
8:10 — Cutleaf Toothwort
9:25, 14:25, 22:50, 32:40 — Buckthorn (invasive)
13:31, 18:50 — Poison Ivy
20:00, 26:00, 31:00, 38:20, 43:40 — Garlic Mustard (invasive)
20:15 — Autumn Olive (invasive)
22:00 — Yellow Wood Violet
29:20 — Mayapple
33:35 — Goldenrod
36:00 — Burdock
38:00 — Jewelweed
41:00 — Jack In The Pulpit
42:00 — Elm Trees
42:28 — Dame’s Rocket (invasive)
Follow Up
Several folks had great follow up questions after the Facebook LIVE event. Here are answers to their questions…
Autumn Olive
Rob Forrest Asked: How about autumn olive? We have that across the pond from you. You have to treat the stumps late summer/early fall right as you cut them. Prolific spreaders and thorny trees.
Reply from Jimmy Brochtrup at Smoky Lake: Autumn Olive Berries are edible and taste great! Collecting the berries every season in August obviously limits its spread. Like many non-natives they will tend to take over if not aggressively treated or removed.
More Information about Autumn Olive
Wild Cucumber
Julie Goss Asked: Can you talk about Wild Cucumber?
Reply from Cory Bloomer at Smoky Lake: Hi Julie, Wild cucumber does have years of immense growth (like 2019 was). This is a native plant though, and can be easily maintained with mechanical or hand methods. During sap season remove any dead growth vines and use mowing to control growth during the warmer months. Hope this was helpful and please do reach out with any further questions that you may have.