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Proceedings of the regional cogongrass conference: a cogongrass management guide

Informally Refereed

Abstract

This Regional Cogongrass Conference was organized because of the deep concerns expressed by many over the unrelenting invasion of this bold, unwanted, and hard-to-control grass, this cogongrass. Even though many seem acquiescent to the spread of kudzu, privets, or honeysuckle, the takeover by cogongrass drives well deserved fears and dire predictions by land users, owners, and conservationists alike. Its occupation is so tight and complete that it excludes even other invasive plants, and certainly most wildlife, insects, and micro-fauna and flora. It does not just alter the web-of-life, it replaces it with a lime-green biological desert. It completes its domination by burning so intense that it consumes any and everything to below 10 feet high, whether native shrubs or human structures, to threaten the lives of firefighters. Throughout the World, on every continent except Antarctica, its notoriety as the “Worst Invasive Plant of Non-crop Lands” is well-earned since it exacts huge tributes and enacts lasting changes on cultures that live close to the land, and our southern culture actually lives close to the land but few remember this. We live from the land still in both sustenance and spirit, since we have been blessed to inhabit one of the richest land-plant-soil systems remaining on the planet. Few other countries can even remember such a time in their recent history, their time is long past, but we live in such a time now. How long will this last?

Citation

Loewenstein, Nancy J.; Miller, James H. 2007. Proceedings of the regional cogongrass conference: a cogongrass management guide. In: Proceedings of the Regional Cogongrass Conference, November 7-8, 2007
https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/33052