Autumn Olive is one of the most controversial plants for people who forage for their food.
On the one hand, it is an aggressive, invasive species that we all know should be killed on sight.
On the other hand… it is a food producing plant that is (to say the least) vigorous and (again, to say the least) that will grow virtually anywhere in zones 3-9… whether you want it to, or not.
For some, there’s a conundrum… it is horribly invasive and will take over your whole homestead if you don’t watch it… but on the other hand, it’s also a bush that produces a ton of edible berries pretty much no matter what the weather conditions are.
For some, like Spice, there’s no conundrum whatever. She is firmly in the “it must die, and it must die NOW!” camp.
Battling the Hydra: The Autumn Olive menace to a BOL, and how to combat it
https://ouroneacrefarm.com/autumn-olive-foraging-autumnberries/
For some, like Spice, there’s no conundrum whatever. She is firmly in the “it must die, and it must die NOW!” camp.
Spice’s Take:
Why do I have so much hate in my heart for a vigorous, edibles-producing plant? Those are, after all, a couple of my favorite plant characteristics. Well, it’s because I’m a biologist, with a healthy respect for healthy ecosystems.
A healthy ecosystem has a lot of checks and balances built in. If one species starts to get too abundant, its predators become more abundant too and control it. When a species gets rare, its predators look elsewhere for food and the species can rebound. The result is diversity: Lots of species with a wide variety of characteristics coexisting long-term.
Why care about diversity when the one species is hardy and makes food? Ask the Irish of 1845. They (at the insistence of their landlords) were planting one really productive food-producing crop: The potato; specifically one strain especially productive in the Irish habitat. Then the blight came, and that strain of potato died. Instant famine. Every species has some weaknesses; and when that weakness hits your One dominant species, you lose the productivity of the entire ecosystem.
Even if the ecosystem doesn’t collapse, it’s not healthy. Take the autumn olive situation.
The shrub makes a billion seeds, rapidly spread by the animals that feed on the fruits. The shrub therefore quickly takes over large tracts of open land. Since the autumn olive doesn’t have predators (such as insects who favor it and microbes that parasitize it) and native species do, the autumn olive outgrows the other species and crowds them out.
Diversity is important
You just lost all the animals and microbes that live on the other species. You just lost all the species that feed on the ones that feed on the native plants; and the species that feed on the species that feed on the native plants, and so on. Then you start to lose even those animals that love autumn olive, because the fruits are only available for about one month out of the year and the animals need to eat all year long and their other food sources have been crowded out. You end up with a whole lot of autumn olive, and not much else.
I thought about leaving a little of the autumn olive that was at The Place when we bought it. A little of it isn’t bad; in fact it would be a plus; a useful plant that added to diversity. I didn’t keep any. Tonight, in fact, I plan a patrol to exterminate any new stands I find. The problem is that it’s one plant that won’t stay ‘a little bit’. I could control it on our acres, but the seeds would be spread and start stands on neighboring pieces of land. I’d be degrading nearby habitats. It’s not worth it; there are good local species I can put in that will play nice with their neighbors.
Here was one of the deciding factors
If you just cut autumn olive, the remaining root sprouts multiple new shoots, like a hydra that sprouts two new heads for every one cut off.
The little stumps there were the whole plant last year when I lopped it off at ground level. This species has something called ‘apical inhibition’ though; meaning when you lop off the top part, more side sprouts come off the root. Dealing with it with cutting tools is fighting a hydra. This time I painted Tordal RTU on the stumps I cut. I don’t like using herbicides, but I know no other solution to get rid of this stuff that doesn’t involve literally years of labor. That’s not a plant I want spreading over a BOL, since the Tordal might not always be on hand.