Ep. 231 New Additions to Illinois’ Invasive Species List | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with the University of Illinois Extension, coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today, invasive species. Well, it's fall, which means it's time maybe to be doing some treatments of some invasive species, and we have new ones to add to the list. But you know I'm not doing this by myself. I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville.

Hey, Ken.

Hello, Chris. You've got some some nice warm weather, at least today. I think the rest of the week, so good time to get out there and do some management.

That's that's true. You'll be wearing you'll be sweating doing management today after dealing with some at least in my neck of the woods, we finally hit that frost point. And so my my peppers are at least no more. My tomatoes, oddly enough, still hanging on. I don't think they're gonna do anything more, but they're they're still there, still enjoying this warm weather that we're getting right now.

How about yourself?

Well, I I never checked. We were supposed to get down to the upper twenties. So we went out and harvested all the tomatoes and peppers on the plants and everything still looks good. Beans, they've lost a lot of their flowers, at the tips, they're still green, still putting out flowers. The blackberry we have still has fruit on it, is still putting out flowers.

It's never gonna end.

Never ending growing season, I guess. Yeah. Not not the worst problem in the world, but winter can can arrive anytime for us.

Yeah. We got everything picked, so there's there's really nothing to save anymore. So Yeah. And the and the ginger we've got, we've got the plastic on there. I walked out there, went out there at lunch today, and it was uncomfortably warm in that tunnel.

Yeah. Our our ginger is all picked and harvested. I have gave it all out as Halloween candy this year. You know? So but, actually, I still have one, two, three I have four flats worth in my basement still live plants that will be grown out for next year's crop.

And then I'm gonna use the remainder. I think I have, like, couple pounds worth of ginger rhizomes that I'm gonna process. I'm gonna try making, like, a couple different things. We're gonna we're gonna freeze some. We're going to maybe try that candied recipe that you use, and then we're gonna powder some.

So we're gonna do a couple different things with our ginger this

year. Make some ginger ale.

That's that's that would be very nice. I would love having some homemade ginger ale.

We tried it one year. It didn't work very well.

No. No. Okay.

That's that's probably more more operator here than anything, but.

Just add more sugar. That's what makes it all good. Well, Ken, we are today reacting to some news put out by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and that is they have added a couple. By a couple, mean, like, what, eight eight or nine new plants to the invasive species list, which has a more formal official name, the Exotic Weeds Act. So if you would get on to the Internets and type it in, you'd probably wanna type in the Illinois Exotic Weeds Act, to get a more the the official formal, language of this.

But, we'll leave a link below to the press release that came out of these new species being added to this list. Now they're not all new to me. I don't know, Ken, or or any of these new to you, some of these species that we're seeing?

I've heard of all of them except for two.

Mhmm.

But familiar with probably only three of them, four of them. Others I've heard of, but I've never seen them in person. We'll put it that way.

Some of these new species, I mean, let's let's dive right into what what is effective right now. And of the list that they gave, all but one, this rule goes into effect right now. So the ones that are immediately considered invasive species of Illinois or exotic weeds, we'll say that, The first one is tree of heaven. Now I know, Ken, you're probably familiar with that, especially with our conversation about the, spotted lanternfly we had, last month.

Yeah. That's one you know, you've heard of it, but yet now with spotted lanternfly getting more attention. You hear about that a lot more often. So this is one, was originally grown as an ornamental. Like a lot of plants, a lot of our invasive species are brought in intentionally, whether it be ornamental, soil stabilization, what have you, and then escape and cause far more problems than they're worth.

So tree of heaven is one that it's kind of a trash tree. You find it all over the place, like, growing in sidewalk cracks and alleys and you name it. It can grow. It can grow there. So one of the reasons why a lot of these things are invasive or exotic or whatever you wanna call them As they do very well in lot of times less than ideal conditions, they can take over rather easily.

So yeah.

Well, I every morning, at least last year, when I dropped my kid off at school, there was a house that had a tree of heaven in the front yard. And I I'm not sure what prompted them to do it, but they cut it down, which I I can only imagine must have smelled terrible if you were the arborist cutting that tree down because tree of heaven is known to have a very foul scent. I do have some popping up in my backyard. And if you are ever curious, because it has a compound leaf, and I have a lot of black walnut, which also has a compound leaf. And if you're ever curious, they both have very distinct and dissimilar smells from each other.

Black walnut, I find it a very pungent but pleasant odor for black walnut. Tree of heaven, no. Not it's not does not smell good. I can't imagine what it smells like if you're running that thing through a chipper shredder. Must not smell good at all.

But the interesting thing is after they cut the tree down, they they ground the stump out, And then it just the whole lawn today is just it's like a lawn of tree of heaven. Mhmm. And so without the use of herbicide, basically, what they have to do is sort of just mow, mow, mow until that root system exhausts itself. Unfortunately, the sprouts are also showing up across the sidewalk in a fence line. And and so you can just see how this one sole singular tree has now been cut down and turned into this absolute beast and is going to pretty much colonize this fence line unless someone does something about it.

And maybe we'll get into this later. We talk about what this means for for these plants. But, yeah, we'll just leave it at that.

Yeah. I'll say until I really started paying attention, we've got a walnut. Neighbors on either side of us have walnut trees and I just thought we had walnut seedlings popping up everywhere. Until one day I and I just pull them, till one day I smelled it and I like, wait a second. This is not walnut.

That's not

a walnut. This is awful. Yeah.

It's almost kinda like cat pee.

Mhmm. Musky cat pee that's been sitting in a nineteen seventies carp shag carpet.

In 90 degree weather.

90 degree weather. Yeah. Yeah. That's the best way to describe it. Another one, which I think we're all familiar with.

In fact, we have our our book that I use this all the time, the management of invasive plants in pests of Illinois. Ken's got it too right next to him. Even though when this was written, officially, legally speaking, these plants were not invasive. But look what's on the cover here. This is garlic mustard.

It is now legally saying this is an invasive species in Illinois, but we've we've known it was gonna it it should have been for many years because it we've had it on the cover of our book for years. Garlic mustard. Yeah. The this one showed up because true to its name, you can eat it. It tastes kinda garlic, kinda mustardy flavor.

You can turn it into a kind of a tasty pesto, but it's a biennial. And so it really starts out a little hidden down by the soil level, this little rosette growing at the soil plane. And then the next year, it shoots up that that vegetative or reproductive leaves and the leaf or the reproductive stalk flowers and then boom, seeds. And so yeah, garlic mustard been around for a while, now finally deemed legally invasive in Illinois.

Yeah. This is one that was, yeah, purposely introduced as a pot herb. So people growing in their gardens to use and it's gotten away from us. Find it in usually like forest areas. Yeah.

Forest areas. Mhmm. And it what exudes chemicals that inhibits the growth of other plants, you get these large monocultures of it.

Yeah. We we used to do garlic mustard pulls, but then I think there was more research that came out in later on from there that suggested that maybe this this plant might just sort of self implode on itself over time, that it might just spread spread spread, and then it might just sort of just maybe just kind of vanish into the background. So we don't really do much garlic mustard pulls anymore. At least not very frequently. I still pull it when I come across it though.

So then the next one on the list is leafy spurge. I don't know if I'd heard of this one. I mean, I've heard of spurges before, maybe not this one specifically. But this one, pastures, grassland areas, roadsides, things like that is where it can cause some issues. Mhmm.

So This is the one yes. Yes. So according to there's a USDA NRCS land guide for this. Katelyn horses avoid leafy spurge. The milky sap, which contains ingenol, toxic compound can cause severe diarrhea and weakness in katelyn horses forced to consume it, It can cause blistering and hair loss around horses' hooves.

Can be irritating to the skin, eyes, and digestive tracts of humans and other animals. Sheep and goats tend to be less bothered by it.

Yeah. Mean, goats can eat practically anything it seems like, but I I have definitely seen this one probably out in pastures. I feel like I've even seen it in the like, in a garden center or something. It does have these, like, yellow, pretty like cup shaped flowers, a bowl shaped flowers. And they're I think they can be pretty persistent.

I know that when they set seed, that seed can last for quite a bit of time in the soil. And so it would be I think with all of these, it's pretty much a long term battle that you're facing with them, but but leafy spurge can really show up years after you think you might have gotten it eradicated. So interestingly, in in this book, it says that the US Department of Agriculture has shown success using six natural enemies of leafy spurge imported from Europe. These include a stem and root boring beetle, four root mining flea beetles, and a shoot tip gall midge in controlling this. So I guess we've already deployed some biologicals against this particular plant.

And looks like looks like they're gonna do large scale field rearing and release programs in all the in many northern states.

Yeah. And pointing it out with like, oh, these natural enemies, biological control. Probably, we're not going to wipe it out, but it will help slow the spread. Maybe reduce those by place. Kind of same thing with Everest Lash part.

They've released parasitoids and stuff like that. We're not eliminating it, but hopefully slowing the spread a little bit.

Alright. Well, this next one on the list is one that I have seen and I'm seeing more frequently, and that is Serrisia lespedeza. This is one that I know has especially is in the counties to the south of me, like in Ken's County, and it has been creeping northward. It's been found where I am in in Southern McDonough County, and it is a big problem for people with CRP, Conservation Reserve, program, where people set aside ag land, to conserve that soil for future use. And what we would wanna see are more native grasses and wildflowers, but what has been happening more with the sericea lespedeza is that this just shows up.

And of all the things we use to manage our our prairies essentially, which which what we wanna see on a lot of CRP or sometimes timber, is we use fire. And fire actually promotes the growth of Serraceae lespedecia. And it it it has become a very troublesome weed. A lot of biologists are are very concerned about it. They're not quite sure, you know, in what direction we need to go on such a large scale that they're dealing with this particular plant.

However, I think right now what most of the recommendations, how they go is basically use fire to promote the plant, and then after you get a flush of growth of sericea, you then hit it with an herbicide to try to kill it. And so it's sort of like make it real happy with fire and then try to kill it with herbicide.

I don't remember how many years ago now. So I went out to a field visit and someone I didn't know what it was. So I sent up pictures and I think there's multiple problematic problematic weeds in this the ilea. Sriricea lespedeza was one of them here. And more of this place in Morgan County.

So Yeah. We do have it here.

Well and I was visiting with the farmer about two months ago, and we're out in his back 40 there in some of the CRP area. And he said sericea is just one of those. It is a very fine textured plant where it sort of hides in the prairie. You don't see it until it really just begins to to explode into this this group, you know, this mass. And then, Ken, I think you and I, we were in Springfield in September, and we were at the a park.

And this particular park had a prairie area, and the whole prairie was essentially sericea lespedeza. And they were basically starting over from scratch with that.

Yeah. Yeah. That was everywhere.

Trying to think if I have a picture I can throw in. I don't know if I do, but but I'll see if I can find track one down for you.

Yeah. I don't think I do. I'm taking a picture that I should have.

It's just my my mouth dropped open like,

wow. It's usually what I take pictures of. That's the problem. It's not the good stuff.

I know. Yeah.

Alright. Our next new exotic weed here in Illinois is Japanese stiltgrass. So this one is a an annual grass that is named Asia. So this one I actually found out was first reported in 1919, introduced as packing material for imported porcelain from China. First documented in Tennessee.

It has now spread throughout good chunk of the Eastern United States. And with this one, you know, it kind of looks almost bamboo ish. We've got the broader, wider leaves and stuff at least when I look at it. I think it it looks like bamboo to me anyway. And this one, plants can produce thousand seeds every year, so very prolific seed producer.

They're they're smaller seeds so they move rather easily in the environment. That's on, you know, somebody walking through, pick them up on them, animals, floating on water, vehicles, what have you. And they can remain viable up to five years in the soil, so they can stick around for a decent amount of time too. So, and then you can say find, you know, pictures out there where you, where they die back and it's just the ground is matted when you have this real, real high concentrations and kind of chokes, potentially chokes out other stuff because of that. Because other one, know, smaller populations you can hand pull or basically just since it's an annual trying to prevent seed formation on.

I've I've definitely seen stilt grass before. I probably might might even have it in the ditch or something when growing near the house. But but, yeah, I have not not had to deal with it personally in terms of control, but I know I've been seeing it around more. Well, the next plant on the list is the amaur cork tree, and this is an interesting one. It looks a lot like tree of heaven, I think.

The bark looks like it. But the branching is different. So if you're looking at this, you know, the the bark looks similar to to tree of heaven, at least young trees do. And then but the the tree of heaven, it has a an alternate bud or branching habit, whereas the amber cork tree has opposite leaves. And and also the the leaves of amber croak tree, I think they look more like a like a bush honeysuckle leaf where they have that acuminator, sort of that pinched tip of the leaves.

And and then, of course, I I did the odor. You know? When in doubt, scratch the tree and sniff it if it smells, as we described it before, cat pee in a 1970 shy carpet that's been sitting there for months. Probably dealing with tree heaven. But it it came over to The US in 1850, more than likely ornamental tree.

It's also a functional tree. So if you peel off the barks, it actually has this bright yellow tissue beneath it and is used for for dyes, like a natural dye. The as the tree gets older, the bark on it will develop into this more spongy cork like texture. And and it and so, yeah, it's just it has been here for a while. And but I think you see a lot more out in the Northeast and and other areas like that.

But it it you can find it here in Illinois, most definitely.

Yeah. This is one I've those I've heard of, but I don't know. I'm not knowingly. See, I may have seen it, but

I just

didn't know what I was looking at.

The the problem is once you figure it out, once you See it everywhere. Yeah. You you'll see it everywhere.

Alright. And then our last two, these are two I was not I'm not familiar with.

Yeah.

Me neither. Not sure I'd heard of them before this release came out. And this is black and pale swallowwort. So just doing a little looking before we started recording here. So this is from University of Minnesota talking about pale swallowwort.

Non native plant that has been found in Minnesota, also in Illinois. It is an herbaceous perennial vining milkweed originating from Southern Europe. These are believed to be fatal to monarch caterpillars, which mistake them for native milkweeds. So vining plant, vines can get six feet long, think it's the same for black swallowwort as well. So they're basically, they're kind of choking out other stuff.

Mechanical control, easily breaks when hand pulled, roots can be dug out and disposed of. But you need to continue monitoring, can re root from those seed, those chunks up in the soil. Mowing is not recommended as it likely spreads the seeds. The seeds have are kind of like milkweed seeds. They've got the fluff on them though.

They'll float away and stuff airborne. And then herbicide like these others, you know, the glyphosate Triclopyr, something like that while plants are in flowering. Or they can be due to the cut cut and apply to the stem. And what was it? Another one for another name for black swallow word is dog strangle vine.

So that gives you an indication of maybe what their growth habit is like, and mining and and choking stuff out.

Yeah. I it is basically a plant. Any plant part can resprout and form a new plant. So, yeah, just if you do have this one to control, you pretty much just need to get it out. Don't compost it.

Don't do anything. It's gotta be burned or sent to the landfill.

And this is one. It was first cultivated in greenhouses in the mid eighteen hundreds in Ipswich at the Harvard Botanic Garden in Essex County, Massachusetts. Then in 1864, plant collector in Essex County, Massachusetts, recorded as, quote, escaping from the botanic garden where it is a weed and promising to become naturalized. And Yes. Sure enough.

Rather successfully.

Well, that's unfortunate. But yes, I mean, all of these plants because of their nature, makes them invasive in in our natural areas. Now everything we've just listed, the this rule takes into effect right now. As soon as it was red, boom, these plants are considered invasive. But there is one that this does not take effect until 01/01/2028.

Ken, drum roll, please. What is that plant? That

is good old good old calorie or sometimes called Bradford pear, which is a state cultivar, of calorie pear. Think we should say for we'll get a little more into this, and a little bit about the definition. So with the Exotic Weed Act, for this, it is illegal for anyone to buy, sell, distribute, or plant any of these listed species without a permit. So you cannot buy them, sell, trade, plant, whatever, you don't have to manage them. That's an important distinction there.

You can't so just because you have calorie repair doesn't mean you have to cut it down. I'd argue you should, but legally, you do not have to. And until 01/01/2028, you can still buy it in Illinois. Again, I would encourage you to reconsider that. Don't go out and buy as many as you can because you can't buy them anymore.

Resist that temptation and don't don't do that. And I think the reasoning is that it's because there's, you know, there's a lot of nursery stock around. So it's been delayed for a couple of years.

Yeah. I I wonder if I'm gonna see a lot of calorie pair with for sale signs on this, Steve. Highly discounted material. Yeah. Fire shot.

There you go. Yeah. Speaking of fire, these do get they're in the Rose family, so they do get diseases. A lot of the ones around me have fire blight, which I joyfully just sit back and watch as these plants just die from fire blight. Me too.

Yeah. And I'm like, hey. You know what? You should prune you should prune that fire blight out and then don't clean your pruners and go prune that other calorie pair over there because it's a bacteria that can be spread with your with your pruners. But don't do that, folks, if it's not yours because you might get in trouble.

Turn the mister on, Nick. Keep it nice and wet.

There you go. Yes. Yeah. You know, fingers crossed for a hailstorm because hail damage actually will spread fire blight throughout the entire canopy. So cool because hail creates a wound, bacteria can enter the wound, boom.

There you go.

So Callipear is another one that was intentionally introduced. It's been brought into US, multiple times. So originally in 1909, Arnold Arboretum in Harvard, again Harvard causing problems again. Don't come after me Harvard. They, in 1916 USGA, brought in hopes of developing firebite resistance to our common bear, the bear we eat.

So, the cauliflower pears used as rootstock for those edible pears. But then in the 1950s, kind of gained interest as an ornamental value, know, as we're building, building more kind of that postwar housing and these are quick growing trees, have pretty flowers, if you ignore the smell and stuff. The kind of the original cultivar was Bradford and these are not so fruitful, they don't, they're not producing fruit. But then as we start introducing more and more cultivars and stuff, they can cross pollinate, we start getting viable fruits, and then these really start kind of escaping cultivation. Think what was it by the 1980s, it was the second most popular tree in The US.

A lot of places need new housing development. Every tree, every house has got a Bradford or Callery Pear planted in it.

I'd I'd say in 2010 when I was doing landscaping, yeah, we still were playing playing them everywhere out in Kansas. So I I gotta cut down a lot of Callery pears to make up for that that sin there, my penance. So I I do find calorie pear growing randomly in my landscape beds. And at first, was like, what is this? Is this a cherry?

I'm not sure. It's smooth barked. But now the more familiar I've become with seeing this plant, then I realize, oh, just another calorie pear seedling sprouting in my landscape bed. So it is one of those that I think it takes you by surprise once you you like see it and it sort of just jumps out at you like, woah, that's I had no idea it would have traveled this deep into the woods. But sure enough, does.

And then you start looking around you and and you start seeing it more and more frequently.

Yeah. Especially in the spring, if you're driving along interstate, especially we used get around for me, we get around driving down the St. Louis area from Jackson on one fifty five. You know, the whole side of the interstate and area is white, and that's canopyr blooming. And it also hold onto its leaves longer than a lot of our native species.

So if we've got trees, you know, as as our our native species start dropping leaves, Callery Pear sometimes kind of stick out too because it's holding those leaves a little bit longer sometimes.

And so we we you had described this, Ken, as, you know, what does it mean to be in the Illinois Exotic Weed Act? Can't sell it, can't buy it, don't plant it. But that's really it. That's really the only restriction that you have in terms of enforcement. It's really enforcement of, like, the nursery trade.

You know, we we don't wanna see this in for sale anymore. But otherwise, there's there's nothing else. There is another list out there. It's called the noxious weed list. And this I don't think this necessarily targets non native plants because there's other plants like ragweed on the noxious weed list.

But that's the noxious weed act. And in this particular list of plants for Illinois, and I don't know if this particular list has ever been updated for years, But it's got plants that if found growing on your property, there would be a force to say you need to control this. So, like, ex example, ragweed is one of them. Ragweed is a native. Ragweed is actually kind of an important native plant for some of our ground foraging birds.

So wind pollinated. But what it does do is it gives us allergies. You know, a lot of people are allergic to ragweed because it is a wind pollinated plant. And so when you're in like a city or a dense a human occupied area, it would make sense to be able to say, hey, you need to control this ragweed. A lot of people are sneezing, I guess, right now.

You're making people miserable. There's other ones out there, though, too, like cannabis. You know, they say, hey. You're not allowed to grow that on your property. It's a noxious it's a noxious weed, and we have the enforcement ability to tell you to to get rid of this plant.

Yeah. And I say for the for the ragweed, that's only for within city limits or incorporated areas. So if you live out in the country, it is not it would not be considered anoxicerative. It's yeah. So there's a document, Illinois regulations regarding invasive plant species, and we can link to this.

It kind of gives a, I guess, a regular non lawyer definition of this. Now I'll just read for the noxious weed law. This law, administered by the director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, gives county governments the authority and responsibility to survey for, control, and govern the distribution of noxious weeds within their jurisdiction. The law also provides an avenue for the establishment of both a weed control superintendent and a noxious weed control fund within each county. Depending on the situation, new infestations will be managed by the landowner, by the county, and billed to the landowner.

The county and the landowner split the costs or at the expense of the county. So you are legally required to manage these and it's up to the individual counties to enforce this. And say enforcement can be spotty

Yeah. In the state. Mostly nonexistent. We we actually, extension, we do get a lot of pushback on this one from people that say that tell us why aren't we out there enforcing this more. So just just FYI, as Ken just read, it's the counties.

We're an educational group. We we aren't we aren't out there turning the tickets out. Yeah. I I don't want that job. So

Yeah. But you mentioned you had ragweed so common and giant ragweed, again, within city limits, marijuana, musk thistle, Canada thistle, kudzu, perennial south thistle, the perennial sorghums like Johnson grass. I think yes. I think those are it. So again, those you have to by law, you're supposed to manage those.

Yeah. But for the other list, the exotic weed act, the invasive species, we're still going to talk about and encourage homeowners and landowners to control those even if there is no necessarily regulatory requirement for you to do so. Because the big issue with invasive species is that it limits biodiversity in our natural systems. And we need biodiversity for resilience in our natural systems. And so, yes, on this show today and in future shows, if we talk invasive species, we're gonna also tell you how to kill them.

Get rid of them. Yeah. And there there's also the Illinois injurious species rule, which is one that rarely ever gets talked about, at least in my experience. So again, just reading from this document. This law administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources does not only focus on weeds, but also regulates injurious animals.

It is illegal for any species on this list to be possessed, propagated, bought, sold, bartered, or offered to be bought, sold, bartered, transported, traded, transferred, or loaned to any other person or institution unless a permit is first obtained, except persons engaged in interstate transport for lawful commercial purposes who do not buy, sell, barter, trade transfer loan are offered to do so, and Illinois may transport injurious species across Illinois without injurious species permit from the permit. It's a really long sentence.

My goodness. What what are your legal fees for that one, Ken? Oh, my gosh.

And there I mean, there's a lot of plants. I think all the ones I'm listening on here are plants, though. I'm not gonna read all of them because there's a lot of like mosquito fern, flowering rush, Mediterranean killer algae. Nice. Probably a good one to have.

Anchored water, hyacinth hydrilla, Chinese water, spinach, yellow flag iris, oxygen weed, arrow leaf, parrot feather, Eurasian watermilfoil. A lot of these are more aquatic stuff.

Mhmm.

Duck lettuce, curly leaf pond weed, giant sylvania, a bunch of those different species, water soldier, water chestnut. So can't can't grow those either.

Well, I guess we need to bring this list up when we talk ponds the next time. In essence, I guess everyone there's a lot of lists out there, at least in Illinois. I there's three. And official list. And and I know people will call certain plants invasive.

They might say, yeah, Virginia creeper, that's invasive. No. It's aggressive in our book, but legally, to be called invasive, we have to have it on this exotic weed list. I think the the the term that we've come up with, though, species of concern, though, can talk about some non natives that haven't been listed yet, which are still in our book, but they're they're they're of concern. And, hopefully, one day, they will be listed.

And I'm sure some of you are, like, screaming or ready to type something in like, well, what about burning bush? Yeah. It's in the it's in the book to control. Just is not on the list yet.

Yeah. And I know when this got posted on social media, you know, there's a lot of people throwing out, yeah, what about burning bush? Teasel is one, and I think Teasel is on the exotic

Mhmm.

Species list. So there's there these are the exotic weed act, those listed plants. These are the nine new ones, but there are others. Tiesole, Russian Olive, Autumn Olive, Buckthorn, Giant Hogweed. All the honeysuckle.

Honeysuckle. Now we have Multiflora Rose, Purple Loose Strife, and others. So there there are others. But again, a lot these are not they're not being sold anyway or given away. There are kind of these sets in, and I think we're both guilty of it too.

There are kind of these defined definitions of what invasive and things are, but we kind of use them, some of these terms interchangeably. So, like, invasive and so 02/03/1999, executive order one three one one two signed by President Clinton, established National Invasive Species Council, and they define invasive species as non native or alien to the ecosystem under consideration. And a species whose introduction causes or is likely to cause economic harm, environmental harm, or harm to human health. So but but kind of by this definition, to be invasive has to be non native, introduced either intentionally or unintentionally, it doesn't matter how it got here. And likely, it does or is likely to cause environmental or economic harm or harm to humans.

So then you're getting into your natives. So native plants right off the bat cannot by definition be native because they are, or can be invasive because they are native to that area. And even native, you know, definition, you know, what exactly is the definition of native? One is, you know, a plant that is part of the balance of nature and has developed over hundreds or thousands of years in a particular region or ecosystem. It's evolved in a specific geographical area.

Usually a lot of times defined as growing wild when scientific collection began in the area.

Yeah.

So, you know, like you talk about invasive natives, you know, poison ivy, that's a native plant. Mhmm. But it's not invasive. So Right. It's just problematic.

I I do go back and forth with some people over Osage Orange, which is also known as, like, the hedge apple. And I think when during European settlement, I don't think it was necessarily found as far north as Illinois. They believe the ones that they did find were brought up from the South by Native Americans, but there's more historical evidence beyond before that to show that Osage Orange was present in, like, Illinois before the last ice age. And that after the ice age, we lost a lot of the megafauna, which would be seed dispersers like the giant sloth, the mammoth, all that, and which then kind of pushed Osage Orange down south, and it was not able to really naturally return back to the northern part of the continent. So I still say is I I still would call it a native tree in my neck of the woods.

Native ish. Yeah. I think most maps show it as Texas, Oklahoma, a little bit of Arkansas

Yeah.

As a native region. And, like, even stuff we you know, bald cypress, that's like Extreme Southern Illinois is its Northern extent naturally, but humans have spread it further north. So native to Illinois, but a very small portion at the Southern Tip of Illinois. And like even things like sunflowers, sunflowers are native to North America and indigenous Americans spread them far and wide, that they're I think, I believe they're native to was it Mexico? And they've been spread by humans.

Fun with definitions and and and putting living things in categories and build some of those living things don't read like us humans do. Exactly. Well, Ken, whenever I'm talking invasive species and and and exasperated people throw up their hands and say, why do we in The US have to deal with all these invasive species? Are are we sending our own native species out to other continents? And they they seem to be kind of happy when I say, yes, we are.

The whole planet is dealing with invasive species. And so, yeah, they seem to almost take a little bit of satisfaction in that. I'm like, well, no. We shouldn't be happy about that. We don't want to necessarily be doing that.

Eastern Negundo, which is box elder maple, red oak, some of our or like goldenrod. Oh, it's a terrible weed across the the Atlantic and and the other continents, Europe and Asia. So we have a lot of species that have been that have left the North American continent and and crossed over the oceans in either direction and become huge problems in other parts of the world.

Yeah. It was, I think, Colorado potato beetle in Europe.

Mhmm. Yeah.

Some army worms and stuff. Mhmm. And other I think African and other parts of the world. So we're sending just as much stuff we are sending it just as much elsewhere. We just don't hear about it because it's not affecting us.

It's native here. They're not they can be pests, but they're not nearly as bad as bad a pest as they would be other places, just like, you know, Emerald Ash Borer. Minor pests, there wasn't a whole lot of research done on it until it showed up in The US and Europe when it starts wiping out trees because in its native range, it's managed by natural enemies. The the native ash trees evolved with it. So yeah.

We're

So no reason to look at it. But I think, the the story goes is that, back during the Cold War, The Soviet Union accused The US of dropping Colorado potato beetle onto, into their country. And, you know, I I don't know if The US has confirmed or denied that claim, but I I remember that being a big deal, at least if you lived in The Soviet Union back then, because, you know, potatoes kind of a big deal over in Russia.

Yeah. So it's a two way street. We just we just don't hear about it coming from us.

Well, that was a lot of great information about the new invasive species that have been added to the Illinois Exotic Weed Act. We'll have additional resources for you in the show notes down below if you wanna learn more about them and their controls and the other species that might also be listed on the Illinois Exotic Weed Act. Well, the Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. Hey, Ken. Thanks for hanging out with me today and going through this list of new plants that we can well, not new.

We've already known about them, but fresh plants added to the invasive species list that we can call them invasive officially now.

Yep. I'm gonna have to go start looking at pictures and brush up on my ID. Make sure I'm properly identifying them now.

I don't care if it's a amber cork tree or if it's a tree of heaven. If it's got bark like that, just kill it. I'm glad they added them both at the same time.

Let's do this again next week.

Oh, we shall do this again next week. The horticultural hijinks continues. The Good Growing podcast, so we'll see what happens. It's getting to be turkey month now. So I'm gonna get out the sweaters, bust out the soup.

I don't know what to say at the end anymore. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening. Or if you watched us on YouTube watching, and as always, keep on growing.