Today, Wednesday, May 27, we had 7 volunteers come out to help with tackling two up-and-coming invasive plants along the Red Alder Trail in South Vancouver.
The first plant, wild chervil, is a biennial to short-lived perennial in the Parsley family. For past several years, it has been spreading adjacent to the Red Alder trail, just east of the forest playground. Free the Fern member, Teresa Gagne, had noticed that it was soon going to drop its seed, so she suggested an urgent removal effort to stop it’s spread. We focused on cutting the flower heads off the plants and disposing of them in city green bins. We succeeded in removing 3x360L green bins of wild chervil flower heads. We will return in the future to dig out the roots and mulch the area.
The second plant we tackled was small balsam (touch-me-not), which is an introduced, invasive species of Impatiens that is native to central Asia. The small balsam is also referred to as “touch-me-not” as, when it goes to seed, at the slightest touch, it will shoot its seeds great distances. The small balsam plants on the Red Alder trail (which are growing between Kinross Creek Housing Co-op and Matheson Heights Co-op) were just beginning to flower, so we were able to remove them without risk of the seeds spreading. We succeeded in filling one 360 L bin with the small balsam flowers.
With both of these plants, we hope to control them before they spread into Free the Fern stewardship areas. As these plants are opportunistic, if left unchecked, they will continue to spread into areas that we have cleared of other invasive species, such as English ivy and Himalayan blackberry.
We will continue to monitor for regrowth of these up-and-coming invasive species.
Thank you to our amazing volunteers: Martin, Jeanne, Grace, Teresa, Denis, Mya, and Ann.