Unwanted guest at Blue Hills this summer

The mile-a-minute weed, a “fast growing prickly vine” with green triangular leaves, also known as “devil’s tail,” has been spotted in Milton, Littleton, western Massachusetts and on Cape Cod, but the largest outbreak in the state is right here in Canton, according to a report on WBZ-TV.

While the name itself is a hyperbole — the mile-a-minute weed only grows up to six inches a day, according to Alexandra Echandi, a natural resources specialist with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation — it still poses a series threat to the Blue Hills Reservation.

WBZ dubbed it as “nature’s own green monster.” Echandi said the mile-a-minute weed will “entangle itself” over other vegetation, almost strangling these plants while preventing them from receiving proper amounts of sunlight. She also said it has the potential to “bring down trees if they are weak and unhealthy.”

This invasive mile-a-minute weed has been located “primarily in the Fowl Meadow section of the Blue Hills Reservation between Paul’s Bridge/Brush Hill Road in Milton and Dedham Street in Canton,” according to Echandi. The weed has spread over 50 acres of land in the southern section of Fowl Meadow near Green Lodge Street in Canton.

Echandi said the weed can “grow in pretty much any kind of environment — dry, wet, shady, and sunny.” Even its seeds are adapted to survive in the soil for up to seven or eight years, making this a potentially long-term problem. She said the first recorded mile-a-minute sighting in the northern section of Fowl Meadow was in 2004 and in 2009 for the southern section.

“We believe all the populations were there prior to these dates so you can imagine how many seeds are in the seed bank,” Echandi wrote in an e-mail to the Citizen.

“It’s not established yet — it’s here — but once it’s established you can’t get rid of it, so now is the time to really control it,” said Judy Lehrer Jacobs, executive director of the Friends of the Blue Hills.

The DCR, in conjunction with partnering state and federal agencies, has been doing just that, targeting the weed since last year and taking a number of proactive steps to limit its impact on the Blue Hills Reservation.

There has been a continuous outreach campaign to educate the population on what to look for and how to report any potential sightings of this weed, even going so far as to mail wanted flyers to residents who live within a 1.5-mile radius of the infested sites.

For smaller populations, like at the northern section of Fowl Meadow, the DCR and volunteer groups, like the Friends of the Blue Hills, have pulled the weeds, manually removing them from the area. But for larger populations, like in the southern section of Fowl Meadow, the DCR has released thousands of tiny insects known as weevils that are dependent on the mile-a-minute and will only feed on this type of weed, decimating it in the long run.

“The reason why it doesn’t seem like [mile-a-minute] is as much of a threat is because of [the DCR’s] work to really address it,” Jacobs said. “Otherwise it would have taken over Fowl Meadow.”

Already on the watch for any expansion of the mile-a-minute weed, the Blue Hills is also closely monitoring any potential sightings of the Asian Longhorned Beatle (ALB), since it has been spotted in the Worcester area and in six trees at the Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain, according to Wendy Fox, press secretary for the DCR.

The ALB is a black bug with white spots that is only one to one-and-a-half inches long, with long antennae banded in black and white. It leaves round exit holes in the trees it infests.

“The impact of an ALB infestation is the loss of the host trees, either because the beetle itself has severely infested or killed the tree, or because even a mild infestation requires that the tree be destroyed to prevent the spread of ALB from that tree,” Fox explained in an e-mail.

While Fox said there was “no way of knowing” what the effect would be on the Blue Hills if the ALB was discovered there or if the ALB would even reach the Blue Hills, Jacobs said an ALB outbreak at the reservation would be “devastating.”

There is a pesticide that is effective in preventing the ALB, according to Fox, but there is no way to stop the infestation once it has started. Like with the mile-a-minute, one of the best ways to prevent the spread of ALB is to be proactive in learning how to recognize what it looks like and to report any potential sightings.

To report any sightings of the mile-a-minute visit massnrc.org/pests/mamreport.aspx or call the Mass Department of Agricultural Resources’ Plant Pest Hotline at 617-626-1779. To report any sightings of the ALB call 866-702-9938.

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Posted by Jeffrey Pickette on Jul 29 2010. Filed under News. Both comments and pings are currently closed.