Invasive Plant Workshop

This May UpS co-sponsored a one-day workshop on invasive plants along with the Sacha Runa Foundation, Piedmont Environmental Council, and Virginia Working Landscapes. Invasive plants are a real threat to local biodiversity, and prevention, as in medicine, is the best cure to protect your native landscape and the medicines that grow in the woodlands and meadows. Invasive plants that were addressed as case studies were garlic mustard, autumn olive, fescue, and tree of heaven. Most revealing was Dr. Ann Alerding’s study that looked at how garlic mustard emits a toxin that kills mycorrhizae in the soil that eliminates natives and helps garlic mustard spread. If you click on the read more you can read a summaries of the case-studies in PEC’s newsletter and below you can view the power point presentations.