Scary Invasive Plants in Your Landscape

Scarier than goblins, witches and ghosts are all the invasive plants we have planted in our yards and gardens! This Halloween we bring you a post about the horrors of invasive plants in your landscape.

Some of our Menard County Trails & Greenways members have already been hard at work on the restoration efforts at New Salem in recent weeks. With the arrival of cooler temperatures, we’ll be scheduling volunteer work days soon! Be watching our Facebook page or your email if you’re an MCTG member for those dates. If you’d like to contribute to our forest restoration efforts at New Salem, but you can’t make it to our work days, there is still something you can do to help: remove invasive garden plants in your own yard!

There are many problematic plants still being sold in garden centers for use as landscape plants and seeds from those plants end up growing at New Salem and in other natural areas. Here are some of the worst offenders: Continue reading “Scary Invasive Plants in Your Landscape”

Garlic Mustard Pulls at New Salem

Why do we pull garlic mustard?

Each garlic mustard plant grows pods called siliques and each plant produces on average 22 siliques, each silique containing as many as 28 seeds. That is over 600 seeds on an average per plant, with some particularly robust plants producing almost 8,000 seeds. That’s why it is so important to remove the plant before it sets seed.

garlic mustard plants
There are at least 50 plants in this photo. 50 x 22 x 28 = over 30,000 potential seeds !!

Continue reading “Garlic Mustard Pulls at New Salem”

Invasive Species at New Salem State Historic Site

Regular forest management is necessary to deal with invasive species that have displaced so much of our native flora.

It is very exciting to kick off our habitat restoration work at New Salem Historic Site in partnership with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources! While the site is best known and visited for the recreated village where Lincoln once lived, much of the site is forested land, from the floodplains along the Sangamon River to the upland forests crisscrossed by several miles of hiking trails. Like most natural areas, regular management is necessary to deal with invasive species that have displaced so much of our native flora. Continue reading “Invasive Species at New Salem State Historic Site”