Category: Research

21 Mar 2020

Lesser Celandine….Smotherer of Native Plants

Lesser Celandine….Smotherer of Native Plants

Lesser celandine (Ficaria verna) is a broadleaf plant with a yellow flower, which is native to Europe and Western Asia. In North America it is considered to be a highly invasive plant. You can find it growing in 21 of the lower 48 states, and in southern parts of Canada.

Lesser celandine produces both seeds and bulbils. This type of reproduction strategy causes it to be highly invasive, and allows it to spread like wildfire. The three easiest and fastest ways it spreads are water ways, boots of hikers, and hooves of ungulates. The spread of lesser celandine begins to create dense green carpets in our woods and lawns. Studies have shown that these “carpets” inhibit native wildflowers and other plants from finishing their life cycles. When these native wildflowers and plants cannot finish their life cycles, pollinators are losing their sources of nectar and mammals are losing food sources. Can the mammals just eat the celandine instead? Unfortunately no, because lesser celandine has compounds that make it taste bitter and possibly toxic to mammals. These are just a few out of many ecological impacts that are the driving forces to research ways to eradicate lesser celandine from our woods and lawns.

We are starting a research project in early 2020 to test eradication methods of lesser celandine. We will be testing the effects of hand removal, and two types of herbicides: glyphosate and metsulfuron. We will measure cover of celandine and count other species pre and post treatment. This study will likely be a multiple year study because other data shows lesser celandine needs multiple rounds of treatments to eliminate it.

Below are photos of lesser celandine before and after it flowers, and the dense carpet it creates.

–Chad G.

pre-flower stage
flowering stage
13 Mar 2020

Wildflower Data

Wildflower Data

In winter we spend a lot of time indoors, analyzing data from the previous year.  In 2019, we had our first opportunity to collect data on native spring ephemerals.  These are native (as opposed to alien or invasive) species whose life cycle is quite short.  The plants emerge, grow, flower and die generally between February and May, before trees fully leaf out.  Our data show that Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) is the most dominant ephemeral across the woods in both frequency and density.  The frequency of wildflowers across 3 of our woodland is shown in the graph.

–Jennifer

15 Nov 2019

Salamanders and Beetles and Spiders….oh my!

Salamanders and Beetles and Spiders….oh my!

Part of our Ecological Monitoring project involves faunal (animal) sampling. We focus on arthropods, amphibians and reptiles during these surveys.  Mini pitfall traps are established along our already existing transects using a hand spade, red solo cups, moist paper towels and clay saucer plates (see image below).  These cups are checked (and emptied) over the course of one week. We mostly find arthropods like beetles, harvestman, isopods and spiders.  Once during the sampling week we search “herp” circles in which we flip logs and rocks, and scan the ground looking for frogs, salamanders, snakes and toads. When looking for amphibians and reptiles, the most common thing found depends on the time of year. We find a lot of American toads during the summer and salamanders in the fall.—Chad G.

The picture below shows our pitfall traps. The last box is an eastern red-backed salamander and her eggs we found in an existing hole. She was left alone and a new hole was dug. No animals are hurt during this process.