Virginia Bluebells
Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are a sweet sight to see as winter blues are on their way out and spring ephemerals are coming up in the woodlands. These native spring flowers occur in moist woodlands and floodplains; such as Cherokee, Iroquois, and Shawnee Park. While now found in isolated populations, this plant can create large swaths along a riparian area and is something out of a fairy tale if you are lucky enough to come across such a setting!
Their oval-shaped leaves first emerge a dusty purple before turning green to reveal soft purple buds. The flowers open into their bell-shape as pink before the pH in the plant tissues changes and the bells turn blue, the reason they are sometimes referred to as Blue-and-pink Ladies. These striking blue flowers are composed of five petals, fused into a tube, which require long-tongued pollinators for pollination. These perennials are good nectar sources for their pollinators; including bumblebees, butterflies, skippers, and even hummingbirds!
If you want Bluebells in your garden, it is best to start from plugs where they will self-seed in following years. As they are short-lived, you can mingle them among summer and fall blooming plants to fill in gaps after their foliage goes away for the year. The resources they offer to wildlife also help balance out the beautiful but nonbeneficial plants, such as daffodils and tulips (as they offer no nectar to pollinators), that you may have in your yard as well.
Japanese Knotweed
It is early spring and Japanese Knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) is breaking from the soil, maybe from under concrete, to shoot up and crowd out everything below. This exotic and highly invasive knotweed can grow up to 12 feet tall, creating dense thickets of hollow tube-like stems with shield shaped leaves. It produces many small, cream-colored flowers at the end of the growing season, which lead to the production of over 125,000 seeds per stem! As flowering occurs near the end of the stems, these seeds are scattered to the wind in the millions depending on number of stems present!
Oh, and what was the mention of concrete? Japanese knotweed is just as extensive underground as it is aboveground! As well as by prolific seed production, this plant spreads by rhizomes that extend over 20 feet horizontally and 10 feet vertically. This massive rhizome system can damage roads, sidewalks, and building foundations as it grows. It even impedes water flow on the landscape, increasing the risk of flooding by reducing the capacity of flood channels to carry water. With no wildlife that feeds on this plant in our area, it can grow unchecked and displace many native plants that produce habitat, while destroying habitat at the same time. In some countries that this plant is exotic to, it is becoming illegal to sell, however those practices are not yet in place here, so it is up to the consumer to be informed.
The best practice for control of this species is frequent cutting with chemical treatment, or repeat foliar chemical treatment if the leaves are close enough to the ground to treat. As the knotweed grows in height, the leaves occur towards the top (10+ feet up) making foliar treatment unfeasible. When cutting back the plant, all plant material must be removed from the site and put in garbage bags, or it will resprout from the fallen stems. Alternatively, if the discarded materials are unable to be removed from the site, you may foliar treat the resprouts. Luckily in our park system, each Japanese Knotweed site reduces in size every year, but each site requires at least four treatments throughout the growing season. A labor of love to protect our natural areas!
-Lauren Hendrickson, Natural Areas Manager
