by Jim Kellogg

In LBS, Buckthorn grows 4 to 6 feet in 1 year (see picture at left) and can grow to 15 feet in height.  It chokes out all other plants and baby trees.  Birds eat the seeds but they are not digested so the birds just help spread the seeds (we're lucky  buckthorn doesn't grow on cars).  Chopping it off at the ground just irritates it.  The stump will double and send out twice as much growth.  Chop it off below ground and the root will send up new shoots.  Spray it and it just laughs and comes back for more.

This is what the naturalized areas look like before the Conservators start.  Our existing LBS landscape policy is to chop it down to ground level every 3 years.  To understand the tenacity of the buckthorn, conservators tried two different ways of dealing with it. 

In the fall of 2000 at a test section near Condo 10, Buckthorn was chopped below knee height in one section and chopped down to the ground in another.  By June of 2001,  there was no visible difference in the two sections, they were both about 3 feet high.  By the end of the summer of 2001, the picture shows buckthorn had choked out everything and in 1 year had grown to 5 to 6 feet in height.

The only way to stop Buckthorn is to chop it off at the root and squirt a little strong herbicide directly on the fresh cut stump.  Even that will only kill it about 80% of the time.  The LBS Conservators are working each summer to win back our land.   In 2001, they started in a section of Condo 10.  As you can see from the picture, when the buckthorn is removed, there is not much plant life remaining except a few mushrooms that can grow in the dark and a few plants lucky enough to struggle through for a little light.  In late summer, the conservators went back after the tenacious last 20% that grew back even after being herbicided.   After watching an old Dracula movie,  several conservators volunteered to come back with wooden stakes - just to make sure.

In the summer of 2000,  the conservators chopped and herbicided a small test section of  Condo 10's naturalized area.  The results were amazing and resulted in an expanded effort described in "Year 0: Stripping out the Buckthorn" above.  Once the buckthorn is cleared, there are viable wildflower seeds that had been dormant because there was no light for them to grow.  The picture shows a variety of natural Illinois flora behind Condo 10 a year after the buckthorn was removed.  I got excited because there are things that flower all summer (buckthorn never had pretty flowers that I could remember).  We found (left picture) Goldenrod, Black-eyed Susans, Solomon Seal, (below) Asters and more.