Tag: Nonnative invasive plants

Hitchhiking Seeds Pose Substantial Risk of Nonnative Plant Invasions

by Jennifer Moore Myers and Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications Team  • 
Seeds that float in the air can hitchhike in unusual places – like the air-intake grille of a refrigerated shipping container. A team of researchers from the USDA Forest Service, Arkansas State University, and other organizations recently conducted a study that involved vacuuming seeds from air-intake grilles over two seasons at the Port of Savannah,…  More 

Inventorying an ‘Industrial Flora’

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
Shipping containers are stacked like Legos. From all over the world, they have arrived at the Garden City Terminal, at the Port of Savannah in Georgia. About a third of the plant species growing there are also from around the world – they are non-native. Some are new to Georgia and the U.S. altogether. That’s…  More 

How Tree Diversity Affects Invasive Forest Pests

by Jennifer Moore Myers, SRS Science Communications  • 
“Invasive insects and diseases pose both ecological and economic threats to our forest ecosystems,” says Qinfeng Guo, USDA Forest Service research ecologist. Guo is the lead author of a broad-scale study of U.S. forest data that examines the relationship between the number of native tree species and the number of nonnative forest pests. Across their…  More 

Elevation and Invasion

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
When humans wander the planet, they carry their plants along, often inadvertently. For example, Plantago major earned the common name ‘white man’s footprint,’ because it hitchhiked to the U.S. with European settlers and began growing along trails and roads. It is a very common species in the Southeast and has naturalized all over the globe.…  More 

Why Native Plants Are Best

by Virginia McDaniel, forestry technician  • 
This article was written to celebrate Native Plant Month in Arkansas. It was originally published in Our Ozarks. In 1733, Peter Collinson, a botanist and cloth merchant, walked with great excitement to the ship docks in London. He picked up two boxes of seeds from an American farmer named John Bartram. With these exotic seeds,…  More 

Plant Invasion Patterns at Global and Regional Scales

by Sarah Farmer, SRS Science Communications  • 
From the moment of colonization, humans have carried non-native plants around the world with them. “The introductions are changing the world’s biogeography,” says U.S. Forest Service research ecologist Qinfeng Guo. “Understanding the mechanisms behind invasion patterns is critically important.” Invasion patterns vary depending on the scale. At finer scales, invasions are often related to competition.…  More 

Native Trees Naturally Fight Invasives in Some Eastern Forests

by Stephanie Worley Firley, Eastern Threat Center  • 
In this modern society, non-stop movement of people and goods means that invasive species will continue to move and spread, too. Recent research indicates that invasive plants can be found in nearly half of the forests of the eastern United States, raising concerns about the sustainability of these ecosystems and the benefits and services they…  More 

Kudzu: The Guest That Just Won’t Leave

by Maureen Stuart, SRS Science Delivery Group  • 
Spring is right around the corner, and in the South, “all eyes turn to kudzu as it awakes,” says James Miller, research ecologist (emeritus) for the U.S. Forest Service Insects, Diseases, and Invasive Plants unit. Introduced to United States at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, kudzu was touted as a quick-growing ornamental vine with…  More