National Invasive Species Awareness Week – Burning Bush

Burning Bush, Euonymus alatus, doesn’t stand out as a particularly pretty shrub right now.

The tiny white flowers aren’t anything exciting.

But then autumn comes…

This plant is HOT for gardeners who want showy fall color. The name…get it? And yes, the birds do eat the berries produced by those tiny flowers…and spread them.

And spread them.

This entire patch of forest has an understory of only Burning Bush. For a while, plant enthusiasts planted Burning Bush extensively, not realizing how invasive this native from Asia is. In fact, a number of different Euonymus plants are now spreading in North America. Please learn to recognize the young plants and remove them.

We’ve reached the last day of National Invasive Species Awareness Week.

Unfortunately, we have not reached the end of invasive species. There are many more. Know what plants you are buying at nurseries or being offered by well-meaning friends. If something grows ‘incredibly well here,’ then that’s suspicious. Look the plant up online. Check several sources. (One we checked for Bush Honeysuckle made no mention of it being invasive or that it’s on numerous ‘prohibited to plant’ lists.) Check local arboretums, extensions services and park websites.

Or best, go too www.Invasive.org.

Thanks! We squirrels appreciate you humans keeping nature natural…becasue some of us wildlife are tempted by new berries way too much!

Another—worse—Invasive

We featured this problem shrub last year, so will only give it a brief nose wrinkle and refer you to our November 20, 2012 post. This loose shrub is a Burning Bush escaped to the woods. Its more familiar form is a hedge.

They grow into big ones, at least in our neighborhood.

Burning Bush

I took a nice long branch to branch trip with Miz Flora, and nearly fell off my limb when her chittering sounded close to…cursing.

What? I looked around and all I saw were some pretty orange bushes below us.

I swallowed hard and asked, “What’s wrong.”

“Burning Bush,” she muttered. “It’s filling this woods to the point nothing else can grow.”

It had. Every spot between tree trunks in this small woodlot had an orange bush in it. “So… invasive?” I asked.

She shot me a look. “You think?”

Whoa, she was mad. But the older squirrel immediately wrung her paws. “Sorry, Nutmeg. I don’t know what came over me.” She waved her paw. “These plants are so awful, spreading like crazy and not letting anything else grow. Look how tall they get. An animal can’t get through them, they’re so thick, and worse…”

What could be worse?

“They don’t grow anything wildlife can eat. The berries make animals sick.”

And they are spreading—apparently started from this one set of shrubs a neighborhood planted.

Not good. Once I knew what Burning Bush was, I started noticing it everywhere. Now the sight makes me a little queasy.