What invasive plants or animals populate your area?

Increasingly common are nuisance shit beasts known as "neighbors' dogs".

I let the dogs shit and piss in my yard. I figure it keeps the deer a little spooked.

Buddleia but I like it. And I like Guerlain Champs-Élysées which features it.

It looks pretty.

We have filaree. Wicked ingenious seeds that screw themselves into the ground.

We have something called Cottonwood Militia in Northern California and its out of control. Its fully armed -“Locked and Loaded”’waiting for the word from Dump. Theres no way to weed out this fungus amongust.

Goddamed Oriental Bittersweet. I want to go back in time and smack the shit out of whomever originally brought it here. viciously.

European Starlings.

But I was satisfied the other day when an American Robin chased a Starling away.

Noisy miners. I didn't use to like how they dive-bombed the crested pigeons but now I do because the pigeons crap on my balcony.

Republicans

Fucking buckthorn.

Canada Geese!

Awful shit monsters.

Indians. Dot not drunk.

Calla lilies, while beautiful, are invasively beautiful around these parts.

Also, Sweet Broom aka Scotch Broom aka French Broom. Quite beautiful in the springtime, but almost impossible to eradicate.

Whites

Eucalyptus

Maga

Morning Glory-HELP!

I'm not OP, but it would be nice if we could have actual answers...I'm interested in hearing about the invasive PLANTS and/or ANIMALS.

Not political crap.

I just saw YouTube video yesterday explaining earthworms aren’t native to the glacial parts of the US. For example, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

r20: apparently, there WERE native earthworms in the glaciated U.S. parts, but they were wiped out. European earthworms were introduced thereafter. Here is AI's answer:

[quote] Yes, there are places on Earth where earthworms are not found, primarily in Antarctica and the high Arctic, due to the extreme cold and lack of suitable soil conditions. Earthworms require specific environmental conditions like moist, warm soil for survival.

[quote] Antarctica and High Arctic: The permafrost and glaciers in these regions make it impossible for earthworms to survive.

[quote] Previously Glaciated Areas: In regions like Canada and the northern United States, native earthworms were wiped out during the last Ice Age. While non-native European species have been introduced to these areas, they are not considered native.

[quote] High Altitude and Boreal Forests: Earthworms are generally limited in range by cold and are not commonly found in high-elevation forests or boreal forests.

Amur honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii is an extremely invasive shrub that invades and monopolizes woods, eventually eliminating the native wildflowers.

English ivy. I grew up in the Portland, OR area and it is all over. It latches onto trees and slowly strangles them over the years. It looks pretty, but it's a nuisance. I remember my parents having to continually cut it down to avoid it from taking a death grip on the trees at our house.

English Ivy is diabolical.

Coyotes, SF.

Can't believe no one from the South has chimed in with kudzu.

Coyotes are native to California and the Bay Area, r25.

R25 I know that, what's your point.

Invasive in a general sense still means tending to spread prolifically and undesirably/harmfully.

Fuck you, R1, and the whore who rode in on you. Tired old bag of shit.

We will bite a bitch!

Hackberry trees, ligustrum, Bermuda grass and many others. This list of Texas invasives includes more than just plants:

R26 goddammit

Not to get all xenophobic, Asian restaurants can stay! But Asian invasives are wreaking havoc on woodland ecosystems all over the towns a bit north of NYC. Japanese wisteria choking old trees by the millions and spreading more and more each year. Tree of Heaven is another one… it quickly crowds out natives and grows like it’s on steroids. Then there’s bamboo which has absolutely taken over a few places along the highways. And a lot more… Japanese Knotweed is another; good luck EVER getting rid of it once its zombie root system has established itself across and within the soil on your property. Japanese honeysuckle is yet another one…

Bindweed. I'm starting to take it personally.

YIKES! BINDWEED! I feel your pain, mok. I spend so much time on kneeling pads in my garden, trying to pull it up, but usually I can only get the roots from the top inch or two of the soil while the deeper roots snap off, and easily send up more foliage and eventually thousands of those little pinkish white blooms .. I've heard that that seeds are still viable after 50 years! My hope is that if I can keep up with pulling out the foliage, eventually I will starve the roots below, but the odds are 100 to 1 that those roots will outlive me and the bindweed will strangle everything left in my garden after my death.

I love starlings! They’re cute with their short tails and they have a half dozen songs. It’s the grackles I don’t care for but I don’t see them around here.

Ivy looks great on buildings and it can’t strangle it. Why do you not see that anymore? I guess $$$ upkeep. I would buy, restore, and preserve old stuff if I were one of these billionaires. Drive-ins, crumbling estates, farm houses…. I can’t believe none of them do this. You could makes trusts that would pay for their care forever.

Seagulls in my city, which is nowhere near the sea. First, it was the crows coming in and decimating the pigeons twenty years ago, and now in the past decade it's been the seagulls eating the poor ducklings and goslings. They are so vicious. Also the nutria, which we were on the verge of eradicating, but the animal rights activists lost their shit and we had to stop.

[quote]Can't believe no one from the South has chimed in with kudzu.

I'm in Europe and I'm chiming in with Japanese knotweed, which is similar but does more structural damage, even if it doesn't spread in the same crazy way as kudzu. Those damn rhizomes can lead to a condemned land once they take hold, just a complete bitch to deal with. I see it everywhere on my morning run, but they only remove it on government and municipal land, private property has no restrictions. And so it spreads and spreads.

R33, your strategy is the right one! Don't give up! I just read this evening that the way to beat bindweed is indeed through, as the writer put it, "a war of attrition", so keep pulling as frequently as you can, even if you can't get the weed. As you say, it eventually kills the plant as they can't keep up.

I mean, if it doesn't kill us first. It's even wrapping around my Avalanche Feather Reed Grass (nickname: The Murder Grass), which is its own war of attrition. So far the loser has been me and my hands.

Hang in there. I too got everything locked down (eventually) last Fall, weed-wise. Now it's war all over again. There's a psychological benefit to liberating the plants (even the murdery ones), IMO. I can't control many things in my life, but by Christ I'll gleefully destroy every bindweed I find.

*even if you can't get the root, that is

In San Francisco and the northwest states we have an invasive, non-native, Himalayan Blackberry, Fast growing, it sends runners underground to spread as wells as seeds, has large hard thorns. It will take over any area. Difficult to eradicate. We are not allowed to ude toxic weed killers, such as Roundup, so they must be destroyed by digging up the rootball and runners. If you get these nasty invaders, try to remove ASAP.

If every patriotic citizen would make one blackberry pie a day, it would make some good inroads into the blackberry population. But that means picking while avoiding the vicious thorns.

We have a large population of ring-necked parakeets in London. They're so fucking noisy. There are loads of theories about how they came to be here. There were suggestions they could be culled but it's way past that now.

r40 Wild berries take forever to gather, that's why they're so expensive compared to other fruit. And then you're asking people to correctly identify a Himalayan one and destroy it and its roots and its runners after they're done foraging, forget about it.

We had this government-funded pilot project years ago where they tried making skincare out of Japanese knotweed (lots of antioxidants in it), but it didn't take off. Probably because of the high cost and established market players. Also, relying on an invasive species for your supply doesn't make much business sense in the first place.

r41 They absolutely can be culled, but it's hard to get the people on board with killing those dollfaces.

Madrid had a cull back in 2019, as soon as the right-wingers came to power in the city. I even made a thread about it on DL and there were obviously lots of protestations from fellow DLers.

[post redacted because independent.co.uk thinks that links to their ridiculous rag are a bad thing. Somebody might want to tell them how the internet works. Or not. We don't really care. They do suck though. Our advice is that you should not click on the link and whatever you do, don't read their truly terrible articles.]

The ring-necked parakeets were designated as pests in the UK in 2009 already, so the fact there are so many around in London is the city's problem.

[quote]In the UK, the population is thought to be very low after the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs launched a culling programme in 2011, with National England designated them as pests.

Florida's got you all beat. More than 500 invasive species, the highest of any US state.

When I lived in St. Pete, there were flocks of parrots -- pretty, but not native. And at Silver Springs, when a Tarzan movie was filmed there, they released the monkeys afterwards, and if you like, you can go there and monkeys jump on your vehicle. No thanks.

I had a Japanese/Golden Rain Tree in my yard in St. Pete. They're beautiful trees when they bloom, but completely invasive.

Yada yada yada.

[quote]Florida's got you all beat. More than 500 invasive species, the highest of any US state.

God forbid they spent a dollar on pest control and culling programmes. Socialism! But also proof they only see nature as something to be exploited.

I would go invasive species hunting with this cookie-smelling twink!

Came across this while googling recent articles about the purple sea urchin in California, which was a huge deal some years ago.

r34 I have come to accept Grackles (even when I lived in New Mexico, where the Great Tailed species was all but ubiquitous). They belong.

I don't mind Starlings in their natural habitat, and they can be quite beautiful in flocks (see link). But whenever I see a group of Starlings edging out a sole American Robin feeding on a lawn, it upsets me.

In San Francisco and the northwest states we have an invasive, non-native, Himalayan Blackberry, Fast growing, it sends runners underground to spread as well as seeds, has large hard thorns. It will take over any area. Difficult to eradicate. We are not allowed to ude toxic weed killers, such as Roundup, so they must destroyed by digging up the rootball and runners. If you get these nasty invaders try to remove ASAP.

With flora it's kudzu, and Mimosas. I love the look of Mimosa trees but they are basically an invasive week that grows into a tree. Last spring I had a planter area that's about 3'x10'. I woke up one day to find no less than 10,000 Mimosa seedlings sprouting up in the planter, and I don't even have any Mimosa trees on my property. Kudzu takes over any property that is not regularly maintained. I've seen it grow up an over an abandoned house an eventually tear the whole building down by ripping every board apart.

With fauna (at least on my property) it's Armadillos, gopher tortoises, deer, bobcats, rabbits, and the occasional snake (both poisonous and non-poisonous).

.......

Kudzu. Virginia Creeper. Possibly the same thing. Equally fucking IRRITATING!!!!

Kudzu is Asian, Virginia creeper (aka woodbine) is native to North America and Canada. So an aggressive domestic species, unless you're posting from the UK or something. Usually takes over unkept bushes, otherwise it's not that difficult to control.

Chinese Tallow, aka "Popcorn" tree

R48 Trump has put a stop to fake science like that. No NSF or NOAA grants for commie students.

I'm pretty sure that our entire landscape in the northeast will be Japanese knotweed within a few years. Aren't there any tasty recipes that use it?

r56 He is of the resilient Homosexualia family, I have a feeling he will thrive regardless.

Here pictured with a young Josh Hartnett.

OP here. We are super low maintenance on our yard. I'm ok with whatever grows growing, except that fucking chameleon plant.

We did have Japanese knotweed, though. It was primarily on our neighbor's yard. They have an organic gardening company that told us basically "the only fucking thing that will kill the fucking knotweed is to FUCK it up with roundup". So they used Roundup, and the Japanese knotweed is GONE! Well they also put down tarps and things to rob the knotweed area of any sunshine.

r57 Yes, you can make lots of healthy things with it, but you need young shoots and the window to catch those is quite short, about a month. And you need to make sure it grows in an area where pesticides aren't used.

Speaking of Josh Hartnett, I recall watching that one Black Mirror episode two years ago where he lives on an idyllic farm – actually located in Swale, Kent – and there was the biggest bush of Japanese knotweed I have ever seen visible right next to the front porch. Hopefully they've taken care of it now because it made me so angry in the moment. How do you not spot something like that straight away?! That's why raising awareness about invasive species is so important.

Ugh, I'd repressed the memory of giant African snails until I read senior lesbian's link. We had a thread about them a little while ago. Horrendous, nightmarish. They eat the stucco off homes.

Here in northern Michigan, our undesirable invasives include garlic mustard, autumn olive (which the DNR encouraged people to plant in the 60s/70s), and myrtle, an attractive groundcover that creeps into the woods and takes over. Until, perhaps, ten years ago, there were no ticks here. Now they are an ever-present threat to woods-walkers. I recently had deer tick (Lyme disease carriers) embedded in my scalp!

Do they know why there's been such a tick uptick?

Weeds n’ critters.

My back yard is full of holes. Chipmunks and a groundhog.

I tried to let my lawn grow natural, but I got jealous of my neighbor’s lush green lawn, so now I’m going to treat mine with chemicals.

Fraus in gay bars. Can't shut 'em up, can't get rid of 'em.

Mr. Pike, age 84, a retiree from Mainee, is at war with buffel grass and fountain grass, two invasive species that are spreading in the Sonoran desert, choking native plants, increasing the risk and intensity of wildfires and threatening a vibrant ecosystem.

He began hunting the thick grasses, which were introduced to the area by landscapers, almost 15 years ago. Since then, he estimates that he and his team of volunteers have cleared 550 of the roughly 14,000 acres they oversee. In 2024, that earned him the title of Arizona’s Weed Manager of the Year.

Europeans and Africans, and some Asians.

[quote] Chipmunks and a groundhog

Those aren't invasive species. Those are precious fur babies living in the wild.

Awful.

All species of American chipmunks are native to North America, but aren't found anywhere else in the world. The Siberian chipmunk is invasive in Europe, but isn't found in America. Groundhogs are also native to North America, but aren't found anywhere else. So these two American dollfaces technically aren't invasive.

But even if a species is native, it can still be a nuisance species if it breeds out of control and causes significant damage to land and crops, eg. deer.

Climate change is behind the influx of ticks in Michigan. Our winters are warmer now and the creepy critters are now able to overwinter.

It all really goes to hell in suburbia when neighbors' abutting landscapes/yards become abandoned or severely neglected. Many of these invasives will send all kinds of aggressive tap roots into your yard from someone else's yard... or/and distribute an infinite number of seedlings.

Trees of heaven and creeping charlie were my enemies. You had to kill trees of heaven by scarring them and then painting the cuts with poison - repeatedly until those pointy ass roots dry up and pull out properly. I felt lime a serial killer with those things.

Oh, and we had coyotes because we were next to railroad tracks they use to migrate to Chicago. Their heads are flat and wide just like Wiley.

Definitely bamboo in L.A., lots of parrots in West Hollywood (where they used to be only in Pasadena), lots of crows. Strangely, no pigeons. I'm surprised that hawks don't make mincemeat out of the parrots.

When I visited southern Argentina a while ago, we took the train to Tierra del Fuego, and wild horses would run aside the train. We thought it was really cool, until we learned that they've flourished so much, that they are damaging the forests with their eating. There are no natural predators there, and the animal activists are adamant against culling them, or even putting them out of their misery should they grievously injure themselves.

Again with the English Ivy. My husband has been trimming it for the last two days. You have to keep it under control or it’ll strangle everything else.

Also, Golden Bamboo. Actually, any runner bamboo because they spread by rhizomes, making eradication almost impossible.

[quote]Strangely, no pigeons.

It's because of the crows! They're usually the first casualty when the crows move in because they're nowhere near as quick and agile as sparrows and the smaller birds. I hardly see any pigeons in my city now because of the crows, whereas there were huge bevies of pigeons everywhere twenty years ago (think Venice), to the extent that we needed expensive eradication programmes with contraceptives.

We tried introducing the peregrine falcon to take care of the crows like they've done in NYC, with no luck. They just don't want to nest here.

Earth is billions of years old .Species have been displacing each other and migrating to other habitats for millions of years. "Native Species" & "Invasive Species" is an absurd 21st century man-made concept. Woke biology.

Why thank you, r77, very informative.

In case r78 isn't joking, then he should definitely look up the concepts of rate and impact of a species' introduction into a new ecosystem. That's the difference between migration over a longer period and man-made migration (includes climate change).

Actual footage of nutrias in my city begging for food on the banks of our river, like gypsies in an airport. One of them did this to me not far from here when I was waiting for my chemo appointment – it stood up on its hind legs, clasped its front paws and looked me straight in the eye. I never felt more guilty in my life for not having any food with me. I swear they learned this from the local homeless folk.

And of course everyone feeds them because they're cute. Just like my mom and I used to feed the ducks in this same river with mouldy bread because they were cute and we didn't know it was really bad for them. We likely killed many that way, all the while convinced we were doing them a solid.

Sea lampreys got into the Great Lakes from the ocean via human-made canals and have evaded all attempts at eradicating them. They're supposed to be good to eat, but nobody around here has a taste for them, and no one's figured out a practical system for catching enough of them at a time to make it worthwhile processing and shipping them elsewhere. Just as well as the Great Lakes are super polluted.

R81 Hold me David!

Greasy little starlings everywhere.

Cream knew all about those tired starlings.

Agent Clarice Starling

I wish my starlings were well scrubbed, and that they would hustle out of the continental US.

In New England there's a problem with ailanthus trees, which I believe are native to China or Asia. They grow two feet a week in the summer and spread like crazy, once one takes root in a neighborhood they start sprouting up nearby within weeks by the dozens.

They are everywhere along the highways in and near the cities and urban areas. I think they actually thrive in smog and car exhaust.

Spotted lantern flies have beset southern New England. They're very cool in appearance, but destroy the plants, and everyone has joined in stomping on them, which isn't easy because they're quick.

Knotweed! I fucking hate the things, have been trying to keep on top of them for three years now. I live at a busy rural intersection, and i get so much weird shit growing along my (very long) boulevard area. Lots of vehicles coming in from agricultural fields & state/ County parks.

I forgot about one other invasive species. The damn Japanese beetles. I have to put out 10 traps every year when they show up to keep them off the plants in my vegetable garden.

r88 Oh my god, alianthus. This is a photo from our government's site, demonstrating how resilient it is. Look at it sprouting straight from the asphalt.

So many childhood memories of this tree as well, and I never once considered it was an invasive species.

[quote]Knotweed! I fucking hate the things, have been trying to keep on top of them for three years now.

r90 Once they've spread those rhizomes, it's over, you'll be doing it until you die. Only solution is spraying it or injecting its stem with glyphosate for seven years to force it into dormancy. Problem is, glyphosate is made by Monsanto and is partially banned in several EU countries because it probably causes cancer.

Another solution is electricity, where you basically electrocute it with a cattle prod right down into the rhizomes. We did a pilot project with this, but it was so expensive and time consuming, it was DOA. Imagine paying someone a full day's salary for incinerating two or maybe three knotweeds, when someone could just mow down a whole field of them in that same day and then repeat the process a couple of months later when it's overgrown again.

I spent a large portion of my childhood taking these off my grandpa's potatoes and drowning them in a bucket of water. Once I was finished, I already saw new ones in the row where I first started.

I ran into some spotted lanterflies last fall in Pennsylvania and I've never seen anything like them. They were huge and had a sort of psychedelic blue-green coloring. I stomped as many of them to death as I could (the PA website about them requested this.)

Wild peacocks in California are a horror, yowling and caterwauling like banshees into the wee hours of the morning, attacking small children and driving people over the edge.

Japanese honeysuckle. It's been trying to strangle my rosebushes, but I'm relentless about cutting the vines back a few times a week. I did notice that once I surrounded the honeysuckle as much as possible with trellis options it went to climb/wrap around those and is now starting to angle away from nearby roses. Going to continue segregating and cutting back the honeysuckle as much as possible. The bumblebees love it and so do the butterflies so I'm hesitant to try and remove it entirely.

I've tried every chemical foliage killer for English ivy and nothing works! It's a mess

Plant and animal species have been introduced here from the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Arabs, the New World. But I know if no invasive species that are are wildly out of control.

You should read Crosby, R99.

Cunt!

In a few years there won't be any more North American hemlocks or beeches. The latter, at least, doesn't seem to be the fault of an invasive bug.

Hipsters.

r97 That's noble of you, but you really should replace the honeysuckle with native pollinator-friendly flowers, of which there are many. The problem is that your honeysuckle will not only spread through rhizomes and fuck up your soil for years, it will also produce seeds, which the birds will ingest and then spread over a wide area via their droppings. So you're helping spread an invasive species just by not cutting it down. I have a serum with a Japanese honeysuckle extract, by the way, it's very beneficial for the skin.

r99 There surely have to be some. Just google "invasive species [name of your country]" and you'll get lists of those that are present and possibly also information on which of them are out of control.

r102 Yeah, this is how the majestic American chestnut went almost extinct, thanks to another Japanese blight.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned quack grass. Elymus repens. Sends out runners to form new plants but will also form sod. If pulled up, any tiny piece left in the ground will sprout more grass. I have covered it with cardboard and mulch, only to have it appear from the edge 10 feet away, happy to have all of that root run to itself.

Instead of Japanese honeysuckle plant native red honeysuckle. Hummingbirds like it.

R97 hmm, ok, thanks, all important points to consider. The Japanese honeysuckle was there when I moved in last year, but it has really gone wild this spring. Ugh, yes, absolutely predatory. I might have to hire someone to rip it out properly because I can't get close enough to where the base of it is located. I would rather plant native honeysuckle or other native florals anyway. I have a great plant place that would help me figure out what would work best for my southwest facing garden area. They might even have a recommendation for a local company to rip it out. I doubt the current property management would absorb the extra cost to have the bush torn out, they only focus on maintaining the larger common areas. Each unit that has their own garden patch and gets to kind of do what they want so long as they take care of it.

Should be R104 for the above. I'm tired.

Oh, to be one of these precious little citizens. On a sugar rush all their waking hours, with not a care in the world.

@110 - gorgeous. That's on the top of my list!

A touch too many syllables but Resilient Homosexualia Family goes on the band name list.

Not surprising about Florida. They probably have the largest amount of exotic animal breeders with the least amount of regulation.

Id take crows over pigeons any day. I had ravens in the yard one day and they are HUGE. I didn’t know what I was seeing at first. I keep waiting for them to come back but it’s been years.

MAGA cult members. The worst!

Spotted lantern flies. Destroy everything and almost impossible to kill.

Dandelions

Get a bucket and a spatula and scrape 'em off! Spotted lanternflies, I mean, not deplorables.

We love our dandelions in Europe and make delicious salads with young ones in early spring. They might not be native in North America, but they're also not aggressively invasive. They're just a weed and rarely overwhelm any of the native species.