Released August 21, 2008
MANHATTAN, Kan. – Many invasive species aren’t as obvious as the tree-swallowing, barn-shrouding kudzu -- a vine imported from east Asia to “help” the U.S. South. Whether plant, animal, insect or disease, however, less noticeable invaders also can cause economic and environmental harm.
“Nowadays we tend to think of such aliens in terms of their being a risk of modern world trade or perhaps global warming. But, some have already been around so long that many Americans believe the species are natives,” said Charles Barden, forester with Kansas State University Research and Extension.
For example, European settlers first brought Tartarian honeysuckles into North America in 1752. That was decades before the first American sighting of a naturally vagrant, stowaway Norway rat (now also the U.S. house rat, sewer rat, brown rat, gray rat, barn rat and wharf rat).
In the following centuries, Americans introduced other bush honeysuckles from Asia and Europe. They wanted them for landscaping, wildlife habitat and erosion control, Barden said.
So, today the shrubs are common and very competitive in and around U.S. towns and woodlands from Kansas to the Atlantic coast. They’re the very definition of “invasive species.”
“Whether introduced on purpose or by accident,” Barden explained, “a non-native is most likely to become a problem when it has no natural enemies here to keep it in check.”
Bush honeysuckles’ only U.S. enemy is someone who will cut them down and treat their stump with herbicide. Their fans are the birds that feed on the shrubs’ fruits and spread the seeds.
As a result, Barden said, “Bush honeysuckles can rapidly take over a site, forming a dense shrub layer that crowds, shades and deprives wildflowers, and other native plants of soil moisture and nutrients. Once established, they can even limit or prevent the reproduction of most forest trees.”
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http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/news/story/briefs082108.aspx
Contact: Mary Lou Peter-Blecha, mlpeter@ksu.edu
