Invasive Plant walk

[urbpan]

Jill took me to meet an expert on invasive plants, who worked for the government of the States of Jersey. To my surprise, most of the invasive management done on the island involves native plants. In the past, livestock grazing kept certain plants from becoming dominant; there used to be a great many small cattle and sheep farms on the island. These days there are fewer, larger farms, and some native plants have no pressure on them any more, and can grow out of control.

The plant pictured above is gorse, a dense and prickly evergreen shrub. A landscape dominated by gorse is impassible.




Another native plant managed as an invasive is Bracken. I was stunned by the sight of an open field of ferns in full sunlight (the sun came out eventually). I'm used to the ferns of New England, growing in the shadows of the forest, in those places where deer have grazed away the more palatable understory plants. Bracken ferns are robust and coarse, and there are places on Jersey where almost nothing grows but gorse and bracken.


A DYC by the name of ragwort.


Heather blossoms. The flowers look a lot like their family members, the blueberries, but heather fruits are disappointing dry capsules.


A landscape of heather and gorse.


As we got close to the cliff it became more difficult to concentrate on plants.


There! I'll turn around and look toward the town and this boulder decorated with Xanthoria lichen.


But the cliff is so pretty, and there is flowering heather growing along it.


And the invasive plant guy's dog.


Let's just take in the whole bay for a moment.
The purple is heather, the yellow is gorse in flower.
Just below us out of sight is a cave where they found prehistoric megafauna bones.
It is thought that early humans chased woolly rhinos and mammoths off the cliff to kill them for food.


Here Jill is pulling up some hunks of Hottentot fig, an ornamental introduced from South Africa.
It forms monocultures along the cliffs.


Bracken in the foreground, I believe that's Hottentot fig low along the cliff.


Oh wait, then we found ice plant, another invasive from South Africa and popular ornamental planting.
My research for this post shows that the names Hottentot fig and ice plant are used interchangeably for a group of related plants.
They were being used for two clearly different species on Jersey, but it would be hard for me to tease out which ones at this point.


A German command bunker, surrounded by gorse and blackberries.


Another relict from German occupation, a gun station, sprouting a big healthy fennel plant.


In a somewhat sheltered spot, a small orbweaver safe from the wind.


And another.


More gorse and heather and boy that water sure is blue...


This gorse is being parasitized by dodder, an old favorite of mine!


The dodder back in Boston looks like orange spaghetti. This dodder is lovely pink threads, sewn with small flowers.


At this point it really didn't feel like work or school any more.


Exactly.

Comments

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Love the Gorse, Dodder and Bracken. Btw- Doyle on ANGEL was a Bracken-Demon, with a Gameface to match...

[stephanietberry.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the lovely stroll! Now I want to go there and paint!

[m0053.livejournal.com]

wow. My favourite was 'the invasive plant guy's dog' for some reason, that cracked me up. Thanks for the pics! They're lovely.

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

Every time I learn to ID a new invasive, I generally realize oh hey, that's it! And that! And...oh god, it's EVERYWHERE!

And then I die a little inside.

The latest was wild parsnip. There's a LOT of wild parsnip in the world. *sigh*

[miz-geek.livejournal.com]

Lovely tour!

[urb-banal.livejournal.com]

lovely, thanks for these!

[iainzard.livejournal.com]

Back in NZ the gorse, heather, blackberry and ragwort are everwhere, having been introduced for various reasons including making the place "look like home" for early settlers. It's somewhat surprising to realise that these plants are all native to somewhere -- but even more surprising to find that they can be just as invasive and problematic elsewhere as they are at home.

[weofodthignen]

Ah yes, I remember gorse and bracken :-) I wonder what was there before the farms - forest?

M

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Thick dark forest with bears, lions, rhinos, mammoths, and giant elk!