Botany as a Forensic Science, part 2

I was going to write about the plant of the month, the Chrysanthemum, but something more timely occurred to me. As I was walking along the Run, on my way to work this morning, it occurred to me that people are cleaning up their yards for winter. The lawn mower may see one more use, the pruning shears are being honed, and furniture put it away.

Some are also assessing which plants to remove, either as weeds to be destroyed or as perennial divisions to trade. The second thing to occur to me, was the random thought of weeds and how to dispose of them. Sure enough, a call came in today about a new weed on the block, the Oriental Bittersweet. We have records from Wolfville, Digby and Upper Clements. Now we have a record from Halifax area. We may soon have more, as the caller admitted to composting the material cut out of the property through the municipal compost program.

SO, this note is a plea: do not, do not, do not compost material from plants you wish to dispose of. This ensures that other people will receive your unwanted weeds. In this case, Oriental Bittersweet, an invasive vine, may well arrive in your neighbourhood, via compost. The composting process does not heat up enough to destroy seeds. There are options: put them in the burning barrel, burn them and compost the ashes. Place in garbage bag and bake in the sun. Then they are thrown out for incineration. I notice some of our urban parks have substantial populations of Multiflora Rose, goutweed, Himalayan Balsam and Japanese knotweed. I wonder what percentage arrived from compost.

Please keep only grass clippings in the municipal compost. Or your problem weed becomes everyone’s problem weed that much faster.

Oriental Bittersweet, photo by Lisa Eggleston