Who or what is this invader?
It’s Oriental Bittersweet, one of the worst invasive plants in North America. It all began in the 1860’s, brought from Asia as an ornamental landscape plant and also used by florists and crafts people because of it’s decorative orange and yellow berries on vine stems. It is highly aggressive, climbing anything and everything it grows by. Growing to 60 – 100 feet!, with woody stems up to 10 inches thick!, it will cover, smother and kill both large and small trees.
Look around in your neighborhoods and woods and you will see it everywhere.
It appears like a curtain of green (in the warm months) and a tangle of vines (in the cold months) smothering, girdling, and killing trees.
The berries, which appear in the fall, are bright and decorative but are eaten by birds which help to disperse it. It’s fast growing and because it’s a vine the tendrils, helped by the wind, grab on to neighboring trees, which also cause it to spread quickly.
The Bittersweet stem is woody and grow up to 10 inches thick, strangling the tree it’s climbing on. If Oriental Bittersweet is not controlled / removed it will result in a monoculture – reducing biodiversity and disrupting natural ecosystems. And our native woodlands will be forever changed.
Now that you know about it, what can you do? Remove it by cutting the large stems; pulling it up by the roots; dispose of it by burning it or putting it in sealed bags for disposal. (You want to prevent seed dispersal or root regrowth.) The best time to remove it is in the cold months (late fall, winter before snow cover, early spring) but really you can do it any time. Systemic herbicides are also an option, but those pose their own risks to the environment.
Being regular and persistent over several years by cutting it and pulling it up will make a very big difference.
Small actions over time can make a big difference.
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