Ornamental plants on the move: who is escaping from your garden with Theresa Culley

Erin: 00:06

Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Environment podcast where we explore the environment we see every day. I'm your host, Erin Garrett.

Abigail: 00:14

And I'm your co host, Abigail Garofalo

Erin: 00:17

And today, we are here with Dr. Theresa Culley, who is a professor at the University of Cincinnati. Welcome, Theresa.

Theresa: 00:24

Hello. So happy to be here.

Erin: 00:26

Thank you. We're really happy to have you on the podcast this season. We were planning out the season of content. I can't remember how your name came up. It was probably Chris Evans, like we've mentioned him many times this season.

Erin: 00:42

But it just so happened that I heard you speak at a recent invasive species conference, a virtual one back in December, and I went, ah, Theresa, we're gonna have her on the podcast. So I was really excited to hear you talk. There, you were talking about kind of effects of, like, tornadoes and invasions and kind of that connection there. So that was really fascinating. So, again, just excited to have you here and to chat with you today.

Erin: 01:09

Yeah. Wonderful. Can you tell us a little bit about your work that you do and kind of what led you to study invasives and genetics and kind of a little bit about that?

Theresa: 01:20

Yeah. So I consider myself trained as a plant population ecologist, but I ended up in the world of population genetics out of necessity. So I got my start actually working with endangered species in the Hawaiian Islands, looking at breeding system evolution. And when I moved to Ohio, I purposely did not want to study invasives. This is sort of crazy because everyone was looking at invasives, and I I like weird, odd things, and I wanted something different.

Theresa: 01:53

But what happened was I literally was with a friend and we were walking in a forest preserve and we stumbled over a plant that actually turned out to be a callery pear seedling, and there was no reason why it should be there. And so, again, I like odd things. The scientists always have to be curious. So I was like, what the heck? How did this happen?

Theresa: 02:14

And so that just opened up this door into, like, why? Like, why do these plants that people plant in their yards, that I've planted in my yards, I garden a lot, I love to do that, you know, why would they suddenly start popping up and spreading? And this doesn't happen right away. Oftentimes, these plants are fine for a hundred years, you know, for several decades, and then suddenly they start to spread. So for me, that's where the curiosity bug sort of, you know, acted up, and I was like, I have to find out what happened.

Theresa: 02:45

And you can watch the plant, you could look around, maybe it came from someone's yard, maybe a bird dropped it in as a seed, but you don't really know until you look at the genetics. And so we use that as tools to figure out what has happened, how these plants have been creeping out of yards and gardens, and and, you know, what's the story behind that?

Abigail: 03:08

That's so cool. The the idea that, like, something's been around for, a long time, and then, like, it all of a sudden pops up, which I know it's not all of a sudden, but like Yeah. Yeah. Feels all of a sudden is crazy to me. Like it's like, well, this is fine.

Abigail: 03:22

And it's the story you see everywhere. Right? Yeah. It's like, it was fine. I've like, I don't see it anywhere, and then all of a sudden, everybody's managing for Pear in their in their grassland or whatever.

Theresa: 03:34

Here's the crazy thing about Callery Pear. When we literally stumbled over that plant, the next week, I was in, I think, Delaware for a research conference, and I was I went to lunch with someone I just met at one of the talks, and he I just mentioned somehow, like, I found this weird plan, you know, I don't even know why it's there, and he's like, oh, you need to look online. Because if you go online and look at the garden blogs, the garden sites, they're all talking about this. How did this pair? This is in the Maryland, the East Coast.

Theresa: 04:04

Why is it spreading? And I was like, that's weird. So then I went back and I looked in the scientific literature, no one had been looking at this plant, had even it wasn't even on anyone's radar. But yet, the gardeners had been noticing that something was odd. And so the end of the result was that we we did a whole genetic study and we found out that it's suddenly spreading because suddenly different cultivars, cultivated varieties of the same species, so say, a lot of people planted Bradford since in our early nineteen sixties, and there was trees occasionally would, you know, fall apart and then break apart.

Theresa: 04:46

And so they plant a new cultivar like an aristocrat or a red spire or a Cleveland select, and all those trees were now cross pollinating, producing fruit, whereas they didn't do it before. So it was really cool because using genetics, had this, like, very clear explanation for, like, what happened, and it sort of explained, you know, the the puzzle. So to me, that was really fun.

Abigail: 05:10

It's to me, like, looking at, like, the map of the puzzle. Right? Like, the puzzle like, you're actually able to kinda, like, look beneath it and see what the picture is supposed to look like as opposed to just all the individual pieces.

Theresa: 05:21

That's Yeah. Yeah. And that's what I tell my students, all about puzzles. Right?

Abigail: 05:25

Yeah. Well, in a previous episode, we talked about, you know, how these organizations like Midwest Invasive Plant Network, we talk about gardeners too. All these people are keeping an eye out for plants that might become invasive. From your perspective as a geneticist, what's like the next layer scientists look at once a plant raises those early red flags?

Theresa: 05:48

Yeah. Oftentimes, like I said, you know, someone will notice a plant that's suddenly in a spot it shouldn't be, and that's the red flag. And then the question is, okay, you know, what's going on? And so that's where the genetics, that's where we have to step in and try to figure out, you know, like, where did it come from? Did it is it a cross pollinated seedling, you know, that came from someone's yard from a tree over there?

Theresa: 06:12

Is it a, like, winter creeper where it's not seeds that are getting out. Well, it's probably part of the seeds. That's part of the story. But the actual plant can creep along and and smother things, and we actually found out it's it's one cultivar out of several that's doing it. That's across North America.

Theresa: 06:30

It's a single cultivar, which I find totally fascinating. So that's really, I think, the importance of where geneticists step in is once people can see the plants, you know, and they notice them, which is a big thing because a lot of people don't notice it, they'll walk out in a forest and suddenly look down and realize they're surrounded by amber cork tree seedlings, and they just thought it was something else, You know, that's the oh you know, oh no moment. And so that's what, you know, geneticists can actually do is try to figure out, you know, why did that thing just pop over there? But we definitely need people in the beginning to notice it. That's the critical piece.

Theresa: 07:16

Were you referring to calorie pear

Abigail: 07:19

when you said that it was one, or were you talking about winter creeper?

Theresa: 07:23

So winter creeper. Yeah. So this is different. Is what makes it so cool. So calorie pear, we know it's spreading because several different genetically different cultivars are cross pollinating.

Theresa: 07:34

And the bees and the the insects, they love the smelly flowers, right? They're just flying all over the place, moving pollen around. So we know that's that's callery pear. With winter creeper, what it is, is when you look at the wild populations, and winter creeper is this this vine, you know, that grows along the forest floor normally, but what it can do is once it hits a tree or say a telephone pole, it starts to climb up. Once the plant reaches sunlight, usually about 12 feet up or so, it will start to bloom, and it will produce fruit.

Theresa: 08:10

Now if it's on the ground, it won't do that. So it can stay for decades on the ground. This is the cool part. Plants are cool. Then it hits the the pole and it goes up and it starts it blooms, it produces fruits.

Theresa: 08:22

The fruits are very tasty to birds. They're gonna come get it, consume it, fly off, defecate them somewhere else. And so what we found out was now you can go all over in different forests, all over the place and you see winter creeper, these big patches. And so when I started with that, I was thinking Callery Pear. Oh, it's because these cultivars are cross pollinating, that's probably what's going on.

Theresa: 08:44

The answer was no. The genetics were very clear. It was one cultivar known as Coloradis, an older cultivar that was spreading. We tested a whole bunch of other cultivars. It was only this Coloradis.

Theresa: 08:57

Coloradis also is the only one that's tetraploid. So it's the others are diploid. They're like humans. They have two copies of their DNA, one from their mom, one from their dad. With tetraploids, they have four copies.

Theresa: 09:09

It's been multiplied. So that was interesting. And then also we found out we we know there are seeds from these plants, so it's not they're just not creeping all over the globe, you know, an individual plant. So then when we looked at the seeds, this is the cool thing, is we can open them up very carefully and you have to pull out the embryo, which actually becomes the new plant, and you grind that up in the lab and you pull out its DNA, which by the way looks like snot from your nose. It's sort of gross.

Theresa: 09:41

But then you can run the DNA off of that, and what we found out were those seeds were genetically identical to the mom plant a 100% of the time. And so we're like, that's weird because it's blooming, and normally if a plant is blooming out in the forest, you know, you have pollinators coming bringing pollen from other plants. Well, we look further and the seeds are actually what they call asexually produced. So there's no pollen contributing to them before. So in other words, the mother is just cloning herself through the seeds and then the birds pick them up and fly off and dump them somewhere else.

Theresa: 10:20

Why? It's all one.

Abigail: 10:22

I was saying, from a management perspective, I'm hearing, doesn't need another plant to help spread. Oh, right?

Theresa: 10:30

So that means that.

Abigail: 10:31

Good treat.

Theresa: 10:33

But you have to respect it. Right? From a plant's perspective, the plant is just trying to survive. That's pretty darn well, smart, if I can label a plant as smart. I mean, that's a good idea.

Theresa: 10:45

Yeah. But they pull out. Yeah.

Erin: 10:48

That's crazy. I had never thought of that, because we have, I mean, winter creeper in all the, like, scrub areas around our house, right, and we've been removing a bunch of it, and removing it from the trees, where I had seen it flowering and the berries. And I guess I had never connected that, like, I you never see that when it's on the ground, but it's only when it's growing up. So that just, like I never thought about it that way. That's crazy.

Theresa: 11:18

Yeah. Most people are just used to it on the ground and they think it's always on the ground. And it might just be on the ground in a given area, but yeah, if it finds a tree, it's going up.

Erin: 11:27

Crazy. Okay. So you kind of started giving some examples and talking about the behind the scenes of genetics, I'm gonna say, and that can be intimidating for a lot of people. At a basic level, what can a plant's DNA tell us about its ability to spread, adapt, or cause problems in a new environment?

Abigail: 11:51

Yeah.

Theresa: 11:52

So let's see. So what DNA is let me explain that first. So I'm gonna use a different analogy, and that's a computer. So if anyone has ever done any computing, computers run on binary code. So they only run on zeros and ones.

Theresa: 12:10

So their language is zeros and ones. So all this really cool stuff, I'm talking to you on a computer right now, it's all based on zeros and ones, yeses and noes. With DNA, it's the same concept. It's a language, if you will. But instead of two different states, zeros and ones, it has four.

Theresa: 12:29

So it has different molecules, a, t, c, and g are our nicknames for them. And so with that, it creates a language within our bodies. And so every single cell in our body has exactly the same DNA in it. It's been replicated. So a hair follicle on your head, you know, you look at the DNA there, it's gonna be exactly the same as a skin cell, you know, anything.

Theresa: 12:57

So that's really cool. But what we can do is then we could look at the DNA. So you and I, I can pull out a cell, I guess, of my DNA, and half of it comes from my mom, half of it comes from my dad, but my sibling, and I have several by the way, seven, we all have different, you know, we're gonna have different combinations of our parents. And so we might be slit like, we all look a little different. Some are female, some are male, you know, that's a whole different thing too.

Theresa: 13:32

And so what we can do with the DNA is that we can recreate where that plant came from. So if we know potential a mother and a father and we have another plant who's unknown, we can like test, does that plant really come from that mother and that father? And so that helps us understand where the plant came from. Now your question also was about, can it tell us anything about whether it's invasive or not? And the answer is not really, because you can't just look at the DNA and be like, ah, you're gonna be invasive, and you're not going to be.

Theresa: 14:06

If only. That would be the dream. Oh, that would be great. Right? Now there are ways we laugh.

Theresa: 14:14

I always think about Star Trek. Right? And so the tricorders and everything. I'm like, one day, you know, I can just go up to my my plant, and I can grab its leaf, and I can put it on my little tricorder and press the button. We're nearly there, by the way.

Theresa: 14:27

And we can screen for certain genes, certain combinations of DNA, and I could say, You know, you are a Bradford pear, and you are a Cleveland select. So we're we're pretty much to that point. But we still don't have something saying, you are invasive. With that said, it's really cool. If you look at, say, winter creeper, we're just talking about that.

Theresa: 14:51

If you go to the store and you look at different winter creeper varieties, you could do this, you know, any big box store, Lowe's, Home Depot, any plant nurseries, and you'll see some that look they look they might be different. Some have are variegated, so they have white in their leaves and others just plain green. Those different types oftentimes are known as sports. And so it's a weird term. But it means like if you have a plant, it has all green leaves, and suddenly one day you go out and you look and there's a branch coming off of it, and it has variegated leaves.

Theresa: 15:22

It's a mutation. It's a sport is what we call it. And so there was a mutation that happened in its DNA. It kept growing. And so what breeders do is they're like, oh, that looks really good.

Theresa: 15:32

And so they'll take a cutting of that, and you can put, you know, rooty hormone, you can put it in water, whatever, and you can root it. And that's how they oftentimes create these new cultivars. And so in that sense, like, we do know that sometimes things might become more invasive if there's a mutation to the DNA, but we only sort of see that afterwards. You know? We don't see it as it's happening.

Theresa: 15:58

And that's not to say that anything that's variegated will become will eat you know, become a problem. Usually, they don't, by the way. Mhmm. They usually get eaten by pests or something because they're more obvious and visible in the forest.

Abigail: 16:12

So when I'm thinking about, like, so a mutation, so, like, something in the like, the duplication, the replication of the DNA, like, is different than the parent, is kinda what you're saying when it when you talk about Yep. And so is the the that kind of, like, the fact that there was a mutation more of an indicator of invasiveness because like it's more adaptable, like that mutation is more likely and can find other options for survival?

Theresa: 16:42

Yeah. Yeah. So a mutation is never going to be it's never going to take off unless it has some advantage. Right? So there has to be something in the environment where that mutation, that change compared to its parent gives it a it a leg up.

Theresa: 16:58

So maybe, for example, it might be I'm just thinking out loud here. Maybe you have a mutation where suddenly you have the ability, you have tons of ovules. So now you can produce a whole bunch of seeds. And so now that plant is able to produce a lot more seeds than any other, so it's gonna get its seeds out there. And those seeds are carrying that genetic mutation, so they themselves are also gonna get more seeds.

Theresa: 17:21

Mhmm. So over time, you start to see, you know, these plants take off. And so every once in a while, you run into an invasion an invasive plant, and it's a certain genotype that has taken off and is spreading and, you know, might just be one of them. And so that's when we say, you know, maybe that's a mutation that happened that became a huge advantage in the environment and became invasive, you know, took off.

Abigail: 17:52

Okay. So that makes sense. Well, was thinking about, like, I remember listening a while back to, like, an invasive webinar with Chris, and he was saying how there's potential for the genetics of plants or of species that are invasive, in The United States, for example, where they originated, have slightly different genetics now because they've gotten more opportunities to reproduce and be successful in this environment. Is that like mutation piece, is that why? Like they've they're different now, or is there is that a different thing?

Theresa: 18:23

No. That's a different thing.

Abigail: 18:24

Yeah. Okay.

Theresa: 18:25

So no. No. That's a good thing.

Erin: 18:28

So let's go back to

Theresa: 18:30

the callery pear. This is a cool one. So in China, in Asia where it's normally by the way, it's not a problem. Usually the plants are very sparse and it's hard to find. If you look at the old plant records from the USDA plant explorers who collected them back back years ago.

Theresa: 18:45

But what happened is it was brought over to The US. People noticed, hey, is a gorgeous tree. So they started cloning it as these different cultivars. So now what we see is in The United States, the we've planted them in different numbers and different genotypes, we call it, that normally would never encounter each other in the wild in China. But now in The United States, we're putting them together, and by the way, we have lots of them because everyone's planting them in their yard, especially in the sixties.

Theresa: 19:17

Everyone had a Callery Pear. And so we're, like, creating a situation which is not normal back in the, you know, original native range. And so it's not mutation, but yet we're mixing up the genetics so that now the plants are what we call cross compatible. They can cross pollinate with each other. Because normally, callery pears, they're self incompatible.

Theresa: 19:44

So if back in the day, in the sixties, everyone had Bradfords planted, and they weren't a problem because everyone had exactly the same cloned tree, and so they can't cross pollinate. Like, a lot of fruits, there's a reason why you need two different individuals to produce fruits, you know, because they're self incompatible. So pears, they're a fruit, and so that's the case. So it's it's not the mutation, but it's like the the genetic mixture of possibilities is changed in the introduced environment, and sometimes that can spur, you know, a sudden spread into natural areas. Not always, so not all introduced species become invasive.

Theresa: 20:23

But sometimes those you know, we have these situations, especially with the pear.

Erin: 20:28

That's just really interesting. I guess I had never really thought about the context in which we're planting these plants and like the density of them is totally not natural. Right? Yeah. Because we talk about, you know, they're in a new environment.

Erin: 20:43

Maybe they don't have the same pest pressure or other diseases or things that they have in their home range, but I never thought about, like, if everyone in your neighborhood has a calorie pear, like, probably not gonna be like that in the wild. Right? And so that's just crazy to think about that even if we were able to study these plants and, like, bring them over and study them in an enclosed, you know, like, area to see if they would they would react. You don't really know in the full matrix, right, of, like, a community. If you have, like, higher population, right, what's gonna happen?

Erin: 21:22

It's all a mystery,

Theresa: 21:23

I feel like. Yeah. No. That's true. And it's also true the other factors that you mentioned, you know, not having diseases that were maybe in the native range, or maybe you lost a pollinator that normally you had in the native range.

Theresa: 21:36

I mean, it could be a down thing too. And so those are all also really important. It's a mixture. It's a combination of different different things happening, which makes it fun from the scientific perspective. It's unknown.

Theresa: 21:49

Right? It's a puzzle.

Abigail: 21:51

Well, that's it just yeah. It's not just the it's not just the environment, it's also the abiotic elements of it as well, that like like the space yeah, that space thing blew my mind. Like, just like a little bit don't know where to go with that now. It's like, yeah. You're not replicating anything about it.

Abigail: 22:13

How close they are, how far they grow, where they grow even, like, you're not planting them in forests like in they're their native space, you're planting them in next to grasses.

Theresa: 22:28

Next to And you're planting them. And you're fertilizing them, and you're, you know, trimming them, you know, doing all sorts of different things they normally wouldn't get. Mhmm. So it's fun.

Abigail: 22:42

We're just shaking our heads. We're just like, hey.

Theresa: 22:45

Erin, just like, don't know where to go from

Abigail: 22:47

here. We Do I have to tell you a funny a funny thing? Genetically, it's known as the Allee effect. And the a l l e e Allee? A l l e e.

Theresa: 22:59

Anyways, what it is is I call it the party effect. So in order for a population to take off and take hold, oftentimes you need a certain number of individuals. So say you're going I always think of teenagers who go to a party. So no one wants to be the only one. So if you're gonna go to a party, you're gonna ask your friend, hey.

Theresa: 23:20

Are you gonna go to this party? They said, yes. And then, but I I don't know. I I wanna see if, you know, this other person goes. And you'll be like, okay.

Theresa: 23:28

Let's go ask them. And so eventually, you go around asking people and enough people are interested in this party that you're all gonna go. But if you ask people and they're like, nah, I decided not to go, and they're like, okay, I might not go. And so then it falls down. So that's what it is, is this Allee effect is in order for a plant or an animal to sort of take root, you have to have enough of them there to get started.

Theresa: 23:54

And it's thought to be some critical number that could differ from plant to plant or animal to animal, but you have to get enough of them. And like so for the pears, if you had a whole bunch of Bradford's, it doesn't matter because they're all the same genetically. You need to have some others that are genetically different to join your party. And then once there's enough of them, then boom, they all can reproduce with each other and off it goes.

Abigail: 24:17

Okay. So you've talked about a little bit of what kind of plants you've looked at. What are some other species that your lab is specifically looking at? Like, and why are you focusing on those species?

Theresa: 24:29

Okay. So I'm gonna take the why first. So the why is curiosity, and then also we've been getting a lot more people contacting us, saying like, hey, I saw this weird thing out in the forest, what's with that? And we're also I work a lot also with the nursery industry, so I'm also do a lot of work for the state of Ohio with invasive plant listing of invasives as well as regulation. So anyway, so oftentimes we'll get someone who contacts us and they say, hey, I heard that this thing is spreading.

Theresa: 25:02

Can you let us know or not? So that's how we get pulled in. And as you know, I love a good question and a puzzle, so I'm always in at that. Plants that we've been looking at, in addition to the calorie repairs where we started, then we went to common buckthorn, and then we went to winter creeper I had mentioned. From the winter creeper, then we switched over and it's sort of like it's a story that continues.

Theresa: 25:32

So with winter creeper, we did find a few of the embryos. I told you we're pulling out little embryos from the seeds, and a few of them were out cross pollinated, not a lot, but just a very low number and you never see them as adults. It's only in the embryo stage, so something happens where they just peter out, they don't get further. But when we looked at them in the embryo stage, it looked like the winter creeper was cross pollinating with burning bush. So burning bush, think about this, is a bush.

Abigail: 26:04

All of our faces were like, why?

Theresa: 26:08

No. Yeah. This is like so cool. So this is why plants are cool. This is what I tell people.

Theresa: 26:12

Okay. So if both of them are in the same genus. So wintercreeper is Euonymus fortunii, burning bush is Euonymus ailatus, And so they if you look at them, they bloom about the same time. It's sort of weird to have a vine and a shrub crossing. That's sort of unusual.

Theresa: 26:33

But we like rechecked the data. It's what it looks like. We then said, well, maybe we're confused, maybe we did it wrong, and then we rechecked no. And then we said, okay, maybe it's another species out there. So then we started looking at any euonymus species we can find, native or non native in the forest.

Theresa: 26:52

So we genotyped all of them, and then that led us to burning bush. Because then I'm like, burning bush, it's a beautiful plant if you look at it. You know, it's people have it in their yards. It's the one that forms this really bright red leaf color in the late fall. I mean, you could late fall, you could just walk around.

Theresa: 27:10

Oh, yeah. All these different places, these houses have them. And now you can go into the forest, and you can also see the deep red, the bright red, and be like, oh, know, something got out. So we wanted to know then, okay, with winter creeper, and I told you earlier, we found out it's one cultivar that's sort of taking off this tetraploid thing. So I wanted to and we now know it's crossing with burning bush, but the adults, something's happened where we don't see adults that are hybrids.

Theresa: 27:38

And maybe we miss them, by the way, maybe they're rare and we just didn't pick them up, I don't know. But we wanted to look at burning bush, and so I thought, oh, it's gonna be doing the same thing, you know, it's gonna have one cultivar that's spreading or maybe it'll do the what I call the calorie pair thing where all the cultivars start crossing, you get a whole bunch of hybrids popping up. No. So now what this one is doing, and we have people nicely sampled all over the state of Ohio for us. And so we have multiple populations, and what we found out was, first of all, all plants in people's yards are compactus.

Theresa: 28:13

So everything that we sampled a 100%, lots of samples are all compactus. And then we went into the wild areas, and we found some populations that were escaped compactus. So I'm like, oh, that makes sense. We found some hybrids of compactus and something else. That was interesting.

Theresa: 28:32

But then we found other populations which are a 100% the same thing, but they're different from compactus, and they don't match to any other euonymous species, native or introduced. And the DNA is such that it just can't be a simple mutation. So now we're stuck with, and I don't have an answer for you because this is where we're going, like, what is it? Like, I don't know. We had people we told the other people who collected for us were like, this looks weird.

Theresa: 29:05

I'm thinking maybe you collected, the wrong species, and can you send us pictures? And then we went back to the actual leaves, and we're looking at the leaves. We recollected, and we still get the same thing. So we're we're we're writing this up. We're working on the paper, but I don't know.

Theresa: 29:25

Like, don't know the answer. Except we could say, compactis is escaping all the time. But these other populations are there's something there. It's a mystery. I'm like, we'll bring you back for a part two date TBE.

Abigail: 29:42

I know when the answers come out.

Erin: 29:45

Yeah. I'm gonna need a follow-up on that one.

Theresa: 29:47

Yeah. We're all gonna need

Abigail: 29:48

a follow-up. Well, now I'm like dying to know what you have to say about Buckthorn. Like, I'm like, what's the story of Buckthorn? Because I feel like you've told a story about Callery Pear and Winter Creeper, and now a little bit of What's the story?

Theresa: 30:05

Yeah. So the story you know what? I'm gonna switch from Buckthorn because it's similar. I forgot to tell you. I've worked on miscanthus more recently.

Abigail: 30:12

Oh, yeah. We wanna hear about miscanthus.

Theresa: 30:14

Okay. So miscanthus sinensis. So for those of you who don't know, it's a very common, very beautiful grass. Maiden hair, I think, is the name. Anyways, there's a bunch of different varieties.

Theresa: 30:26

Some are tall, some are short. Little kitty is my favorite. Yeah. Different ones. Some are variegated, some are not.

Theresa: 30:35

And so it is getting out and it's spreading. And so we've seen this in Kentucky and Ohio. More and more people are noticing like you drive along the roadways and oh my gosh, is this grass here? And so it's one of these where people oftentimes will say, oh, no. It's not a problem, and then you'll be like, look right around you, and then they're like, oh my god.

Theresa: 30:54

You know, I didn't realize that's what it was. So we wanted to do the same thing. So we went and we literally, what I do for all of these is we go to nurseries. We go and we we collect leaves, little pieces of leaves. People usually think we're crazy, but we do that.

Theresa: 31:11

We bring them back to the lab. From a leaf, you can grind it up, and you can get again its little snotty DNA.

Abigail: 31:17

Theresa, I need to pause you. We interviewed someone last season who says they stop on the side of the road and take pictures of roadkill. So don't think there's any weird people here

Theresa: 31:27

ever once. I don't do that. I draw the line at roadkill. But I have been known to go up and just take leaves, and sometimes I ask people and they look really like like, why? You know?

Abigail: 31:51

Okay. So snotty DNA.

Theresa: 31:53

Okay. So snotty DNA. So then what we did was we just ran the DNA in the lab, all these different wild populations, and what we found out there is that it's a wild party. So all the wild populations are just combinations of all the cultivars getting together. And so I was thinking, oh, maybe there's like one cultivar that's like the bad cultivar or one that, you know, is more fertile than others, right?

Theresa: 32:25

A lot of them are just having a little party, and so it's a whole mixture of different genotypes, different cultivars, different genes, mixed together. And so people sometimes would ask me, well, what's a safe cultivar of miscanthus? And I'm like, you know, they're all showing up. Now with that said, there are some recent introductions of supposedly sterile or low fecundity cultivars. So scout is one of them, for example.

Theresa: 32:55

And so that's ones where that's my next step is I wanna see, you know, do they show up in the wild populations? But it might be a long time even if they do. So there are some options, you know, of people who, if you really are in love with miscanthus, I would recommend, like, be careful what you plant. Especially and we talked a little bit earlier about environment, location. If you're living next to a natural area, like, you better be very careful what you're planting in your yard.

Theresa: 33:27

Mhmm. If you're in the middle of, I don't know, a big metro area in a cement jungle, it maybe is not as important. But definitely, if you're near a natural area, you gotta be careful. But that's the Miscanthus story. It's just all a mix of everything.

Abigail: 33:43

Yeah. Careful, Cook County has 11% of its county is forest preserve land, so you can think that, and then you all live in Cook County, and you're like, it's actually a lot of forests just here.

Erin: 33:54

Yo. Yep. That's really interesting. I wanna hear about Buckthorn, but like, thus far, all of them have been different, which is like all of the answers have been

Theresa: 34:06

Yeah.

Erin: 34:07

Different, which is crazy to me, and really just fascinating.

Abigail: 34:11

And increasingly more scary, I'm gonna add, Like, I'm like

Theresa: 34:19

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Buckthorn was sort of sort of a middle of the road where we actually did see some of the cultivated varieties, the DNA, the allele showing up in the wild. We didn't see like like this cultivar was the worst, but we did see a combination of things. And so what's really interesting for me is I've gotten fascinated by low fecundity cultivars.

Theresa: 34:51

That's a whole another thing. We're working on a a screening tool for low fecundity cultivars. Some people call them sterile, but a lot of plant like, it's hard to say something's completely sterile. Mhmm. But with buck thorn, one of the more common ones is Ron Williams.

Theresa: 35:07

Fine line is another it's very fine leaves, and we started to see the DNA of those popping up in wild areas. So that's like, you know, what's going on there? And so a lot of people have said, you know, maybe that's not one that's gonna spread because it looks so different from the other buckthorns. Mhmm. But when yeah.

Abigail: 35:31

I'm not familiar with Ohio. Is is buckthorn on the do not plant list?

Theresa: 35:39

It okay. So that's a great question. So it's on the invasive list for the Ohio Invasive Plants Council. That's true. For the regulation list, which I think is what you're talking about Yeah.

Theresa: 35:49

A common buckthorn is listed. Glossy buckthorn is not. Oh. A few different species. And there's some confusion because glossy buckthorn this gets back to taxonomists, so they you gotta be careful.

Theresa: 36:04

So ramnus cathartica is common buckthorn. Glossy buckthorn used to be ramnus frangula, and then lovely taxonomist, and I'm making a joke because I share a lab with one, moved it to frangula let's see. Frangula ulnus, and so it changed its name, but essentially, you know, it's the same plant. So glossy buckthorn is of more horticultural importance right now, and so that's the Ron Williams and all those. Common buckthorn is less popular in the trade now.

Theresa: 36:46

Whenever you look at buckthorn, have to ask, is it common or glossy? What are we talking about? When you look at especially different states and what they have in terms of their lists.

Abigail: 36:58

Erin, what's the are you looking up buckthorn on the Illinois invasive list?

Erin: 37:04

I thought that now fine line was included as a regulated plant in Illinois. But I can't find that. This is

Theresa: 37:15

where it's really important to look at each state. It can differ by state. So in Ohio, for example, our regulation states that the species is considered invasive. Well, if a species is determined to be invasive, then all cultivars are automatically included with it. Okay.

Theresa: 37:35

However, there's an exemption clause essentially, is if a cultivar can be shown not to be you know, have these invasive traits, then it can be exempted from regulation. But the challenge is when you look across many states, many of them have this, not all, but there's not an exemption process. So that's what we're working on right now.

Erin: 37:57

Oh, okay.

Abigail: 38:00

I'm looking at, like, our recent publication, Erin, on the Illinois regulations regarding invasive plant species

Theresa: 38:08

Mhmm.

Abigail: 38:08

And glossy buckthorn is on the list.

Erin: 38:11

Well, there so there is glossy buckthorn, sawtooth buckthorn, common buckthorn, Darian buckthorn, Japanese firewood, and Chinese. Those are all listed Yeah. In Illinois, on the Exotic Weed Act.

Abigail: 38:31

Not Noxious weed, that's a different classification.

Erin: 38:35

You. Right. And they have a clause too that is about that's about the cultivars that, like, in the future, I think, if it can be shown. Right? Yeah.

Erin: 38:45

Yeah. Then it will be allowable. But yeah. That's just really interesting.

Theresa: 38:52

Yeah. But the buckthorns are fascinating. And Ohio, by the way, is interesting because in the northern part of the state, it's the buckthorn that's the problem. Mhmm. I always like to think, like, wherever you travel, like, what's the big plant?

Theresa: 39:03

So in the Southern Ohio where I'm at, it's amur honeysuckle. It's all over the place. But if you drive north, it's like common buckthorn, glossy buckthorn

Erin: 39:15

Mhmm.

Theresa: 39:15

Typha, phragmites, you know, as you get to the lakes, and so it can differ.

Abigail: 39:20

That's exactly how it is in Illinois. Yeah. Like, Aaron's like, we don't talk about buckthorn in Southern Illinois, and for us, it's 30% of the tree canopy in the We talk about privet, though.

Erin: 39:32

We have so much. Privet is a

Theresa: 39:35

So in Ohio, this is a we've been starting to look at privet, and I've had a lot of people tell me privet's not a problem. But then you walk in the forest, you're like Yeah.

Erin: 39:46

To any, like, scrub area between any of, like, that forgotten area between buildings or, like, you know, behind Walmart and whatever, and it's like Privet and Callery Pear. It's crazy. I did have a question when you were chatting about, just about your lab and how, you know, people will share observations, then you kind of look into it. How, like, are there a lot of genetics labs looking at invasives, or are like, you one of the few, or like, do you know, how people

Theresa: 40:19

There are kind of working on these are a few labs that look into genetics. I mean, they genetics is a common tool, you know, to study all sorts of things. So, I mean, there are a few labs in different places, especially, you know, around North America where they do focus on genetics. Mhmm. I think what makes our lab a little different, maybe, and I think more labs are going this way, but what I always like to do is I love doing science.

Theresa: 40:48

I love being in my lab, but I don't want to be in an ivory tower. So I want to make what we're doing applicable, you know, to others. And so what are we doing? You know, what are we discovering? How are we helping the world around us? And so that becomes rather than sit in my ivory tower, you know, the sort of the stereotype of academia, You know, that's fun, but how can we make a change and how can we help others, especially land managers trying to figure out what the heck is this? The nursery industry saying, hey, you know, let's let's work on not planting this, but let's plant that. Try to identify, you know, what are these problems. I think that's what we try to do a lot.

Theresa: 41:37

Mhmm. And so that's why I get contacted, you know, by different people, different nurseries, companies being like, can you do what you did over there over here, you know, to answer this question? And how much does it cost is the next question. And we're doing it because it's fun, you know, and and we get, honestly, we we do get papers out of it. My students have projects.

Theresa: 42:01

They get their degrees. I have a lot of undergrad students. Many of them continue on to get their masters and their PhDs or go elsewhere. So it's that's a lot of what we do. So so yes, there's other labs.

Theresa: 42:18

I like to think I mean, I like what we do. So

Erin: 42:21

No. That's great. And that kinda leads into where I wanted to go next is that, like, how do observations from public gardens and other landscapes and natural areas kind of feed into genetic research and then, like, vice versa?

Theresa: 42:37

Yeah. I think, again, it comes back to, like, if people see something, we have to help them understand. But here's a really cool example of the public gardens. So one of the things we quickly found out when we went around to look and talk to public gardens is, you know, asking like what are plants that are a problem for you? And this started at Dawes Arboretum, which is outside of Columbus, Ohio, in the middle of Ohio.

Theresa: 43:07

And they said, you know, we have this crabapple thing. I don't know if you guys heard about this before, but they're like, there's this crabapple thing, and we don't know what it is, but it's spreading all over the place to the point like we have a carpet of crabapple seedlings, like grass. And we don't know what we try to key it out. It sort of looks like Taringo crabapple or it might be the salboldii thing, which then the taxonomist got involved and they've changed names and so you get all confused. And then we were talking to other gardens, and one after another was like,

Erin: 43:42

oh, yeah. We see that too.

Theresa: 43:45

And so multiple gardens are seeing the same crap apple thing, but we don't know what it is. And so at Dawes Arboretum, they're using genetics to try to figure out, what is this? Is it a species that got amok that was running crazy? Is it hybrids? So far, looks like several different species might be hybridizing, creating like this hybrid swarm.

Theresa: 44:11

But for me, the fascinating thing is it's popping up in multiple areas, like around the country. So we would have never have known had the public garden people been on the lookout, been like, woah. What is this? And then using genetics and again, we still don't have the answer. We're figuring it out.

Theresa: 44:30

We're getting closer. But something's going on. And so that's the importance, I think, of that too.

Abigail: 44:37

Reinforcing my idea that we need a Teresa episode part two.

Theresa: 44:42

Just saying. Date TBD. Working now. Oh, I'll just tell you right now. So because of what we do with the invasive plants, then we were asked to actually work on boxwoods.

Theresa: 44:58

And boxwoods are not invasive, but they are being really damaged by the box tree moth.

Erin: 45:05

Mhmm.

Theresa: 45:06

And so there's certain cultivars that seem to be more resistant than others, but people don't know which ones they are. So now we're using the same tools I just described to actually try to identify these cultivars. That's a whole other thing. Against other invasive challenges. Yes.

Theresa: 45:21

Yeah.

Abigail: 45:22

Well, that's a I believe the what you're referring to is like the Public Gardens as Sentinels Against Invasive Plants program. Correct?

Theresa: 45:29

Yeah. So the Public Gardens as Sentinels Against Invasive Plants, so PGS IP is a project that, oh gosh, we started 2016 perhaps, And that all came about in part because I was going around giving talks about Callery Repair, and I happened to go to, I think it was Morton Arboretum, the first garden. Every time I give a talk, I do my thing. And then afterwards, I'm like, okay. Now I can have fun because I'm you know, I love plants.

Theresa: 46:02

So I'm like, let's go look at your garden. And so as we're walking around, I'm like, what's the plant that's a problem for you? And the first garden, maybe it was Morton, said, oh, it's amarcork tree. And I'm like, I had never heard of amarcork tree. What the heck is that?

Theresa: 46:16

And so they showed me amarcork tree and the seedlings and everything. And then, I don't know, like a month later, I'm in another garden doing the same thing, and I ask them the same question. They're like, amarcork tree. And I'm like, do you okay. And then I go to another garden, and same thing, amber cork tree.

Theresa: 46:32

I'm like, do you guys even talk? Because each garden is saying, hammer cork tree, and then the other part that they said was, but don't tell anyone because we don't wanna be blamed because they were thinking they were the only ones. And so the gardens weren't sharing information with each other for fear of being blamed. And I was thinking, wait a minute. This is a wonderful like, this is like, as a scientist, oh my gosh.

Theresa: 47:02

This is data. This is information. And so when I was at Morton, was talking to Kurt Dryslicker, who was the collections manager and and the main person over there, and he was like, I had the same idea. You know? Why aren't why aren't people, like, gardens talking?

Theresa: 47:21

And so we both actually were working at the time on the board of the Midwest Invasive Plant Network. And so that's sort of how it all came about. And so it's through MIPN, Midwest invasive plant work network that we created, PGS IP, and so it's just grown. For me, it's fun because I'm, I think, at this point, the only non garden person involved. But I'm the researcher, so I get to see the data.

Theresa: 47:51

And so, periodically, we pull all the data and we work on papers. And in fact, we have our next paper coming out anytime, hopefully, this week, maybe next week, in invasive plant science and management. And so that will be detailing, all the species we've we've seen spreading from I think at that point, we have 53 gardens. We have more now.

Erin: 48:14

Oh, wow. We'll have to link that in the show notes so folks can check it out. It'll be out when this releases. That's awesome.

Abigail: 48:22

Yep. Yeah. And if if you wanna learn more about that program, listeners, definitely go check out about four weeks ago. We, interview, that program, and, who's the? Michelle.

Abigail: 48:34

That was Michelle Beloff. Michelle, yeah. Yeah. We got to talk to Michelle about it, and it was awesome too. So, really, really cool stuff.

Abigail: 48:41

If haven't listened to it, if you have already, and you were like, yeah, that was cool. Now I have more context. Go, let's do it again.

Erin: 48:47

Alright. Well, this has been a fascinating discussion. Abigail and I just wow. If we could share the record and you could see our faces the whole time you're recording, it's just, like, mind blown over and over again. So thank you.

Erin: 49:04

It was really fun to kinda pick your brain and kinda dive into a lot of these really common invasives that we talk about all the time and learn things that I didn't know about any of them. So we really appreciate having you on and sharing all your knowledge with us.

Theresa: 49:18

Oh, certainly. It's been a blast. It's always fun.

Erin: 49:21

Yeah. Well, we're gonna move on to our everyday observations where we highlight the mundane and normal of our environment that's actually really interesting. Abigail, kick us off.

Abigail: 49:33

Yes. So mine was actually from this morning. I was, like, changing my baby, and I look out the window, and I see behind, like, my dogwood bushes, like, trampled snow, because it's January right now, we got a lot of snow, and poop, or scat, wildlife poop. And I was like, oh, and then I went to go look out, and you can always see tracks in the snow, I know. And I look out, and I'm looking, and I'm like, there's not poop under anywhere else, it's just like in the bushes that are near my house and kind of behind them, not the yard facing.

Abigail: 50:07

So like, based on that observation, I was like thinking about, well, I knew it was bunnies because I could see the tracks and like, the type of scat it was. Because you can look it up. You can identify the animal based on its poop. It's fun. So I like I don't know.

Abigail: 50:23

I was just like thinking about, was like, why just here? Like, why behind these bushes on the house side? And it's like, well, it's been really cold, and also like, I do have hawks in my neighborhood, and like, we have lots of like predators, and so I was like, maybe that's like a space they feel safe enough to sit, and then they sit long enough that they have to poop, you know? So it just kinda made me think about it. That's my everyday observation today.

Erin: 50:46

I love it. You always bring a good laugh Abigail.

Abigail: 50:51

I have a whole list of other things, and I was like, nope. We're gonna talk about poop. So

Erin: 50:57

Oh gosh. Alright, Theresa. What's your everyday observation?

Abigail: 51:03

Okay.

Theresa: 51:05

So I'm gonna tell you something that we found out the other day, which is really cool, which goes back to the euonymus plants. So one thing I didn't tell you is that when we took out the embryos, what we discovered is that a lot of the seeds had multiple embryos in them. So it wasn't just one one embryo in a seed. Sometimes there's two, there's up to five. And so imagine, like, one seed, and you open it up, and it can have, like, a whole bunch of different seedlings coming out of it.

Theresa: 51:43

And plants usually don't do that. And so winter keeper does it, burning bush does it, wahoo, the native, apparently does not do it. We've tested it. And it's just a weird, odd, strange thing.

Erin: 52:00

Are those the one the just hold on.

Theresa: 52:03

It's like twins

Abigail: 52:06

I was gonna say that.

Theresa: 52:08

We literally started calling them twins. We're like, we have triplets and quad triplets and twins. Twins. And sometimes, genetically, they're different, by the way. So you can have identical twins, paternal twins.

Abigail: 52:23

And does that, like that's also, like, not, like, could make them more successful, but that means potentially, like, more plants could come up?

Theresa: 52:31

Possibly. Yeah. You'd have to plant them and see if they survive.

Erin: 52:38

Mind blown, again.

Erin: 52:40

Plants are smart. I gotta tell you.

Abigail: 52:42

Shoulda ended with you. We're all I'm over here talking about poop,

Theresa: 52:46

but I wanna hear what Erin has. Mine was sort of boring. I like the poop still.

Erin: 52:54

Okay. Well, mine definitely isn't as exciting as either of the ones that we have discussed thus far. But as our listeners know, I am in Far Southern Illinois, and so that means that I live near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio Rivers. And so when and I've, at one time, lived in Central Minnesota, and the Mississippi looks very different in Minnesota than it does where I live here. And just thinking about how core that those rivers are to where I live and like, we just kinda take it for granted that this is how the rivers are and everyone knows this is how the rivers are.

Erin: 53:42

Because when you cross one of them here, you have to go three quarters of a mile to a mile across a bridge. Right? And they're like huge, expansive. And I, several years ago, took my husband, who's from this area, up to Minnesota to show him where I went to school and all the fun things. And we went to a park where the Mississippi was, and he was like, that's not the Mississippi River.

Erin: 54:05

And I was like, yeah, it is. He's like, you could, like, swim across it. Like, yeah. Like, it's the same river. He's like, that's like, it, like, blew his mind because we're just so used to it here and they're huge.

Erin: 54:17

Right? So that's just my everyday observation. It's because I cross them all the time here, and I don't even think about it anymore. And I was crossing the bridge trying to come up with an everyday observation the other day for our future recording. It was like, you know what?

Erin: 54:31

It's kind of incredible, like Yeah. How expansive these rivers are and just if you're able to ever visit and come to Caro and, like, stand where they come together, it's, like, crazy. So again, they just Taking a breath.

Theresa: 54:48

Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah.

Erin: 54:50

And just yeah. Taking a moment to think about what defines our landscape, I guess, is my is my observation for this.

Theresa: 54:59

I love it. Yeah.

Abigail: 55:02

I'm pretty sure that did blow my mind a little bit, because I feel like if somebody saw told showed me a river and said, that's the Mississippi, and I could swim across it, I would say, that's not my Mississippi. Is what Like, that's not my Mississippi River. Absolutely not. So, oh, that's cool.

Erin: 55:23

That is neat.

Theresa: 55:24

And then you can also think about, are the rivers there today, and oftentimes, their route has changed in the past.

Erin: 55:33

Mhmm. Mhmm.

Theresa: 55:35

So what you're seeing today might not be the case, you know, long time ago.

Erin: 55:41

Mind blown again, this episode.

Abigail: 55:47

Close it out, Erin, before we all pass out or something.

Erin: 55:49

I know. Alright. Well, this has been another episode on the Everyday Environment podcast. Check us out next week where we talk with Steve Butler from the Illinois Natural History Survey about invasive carp.

Abigail: 56:06

This podcast is University of Illinois Extension production, hosted and edited by Abigail Garofalo, Erin Garrett, and Amy Lefringhouse. Marketing and communications are by Emily Steele.