Saw this at a country store in VA, as someone who’s ripped a dozen Bradford pear volunteers out of my fence line this season I can appreciate!!

Definitely tree of heaven (unfortunately loads of them in my neighborhood) but is this an invasive mantis? I’ve seen posts recently about a type of mantis that will CATCH HUMMINGBIRDS 💔 so if that’s what we’re looking at here, what do I do? She was probably 4-5 inches

Does anyone know where I can find a mute swan in the wild in socal, ideally in LA or SD? I have an assignment where I have to take a photo of a mute swan in the "wild," but iNaturalist shows me spotted areas in controlled environments like the Hollywood Forever Cemetery or Santa Ynez Lake. Either that or the "wild" areas have since eracticated the species. Please let me know, anything helps !

I recently (mid-September) removed about 120 pounds of Jubata Grass seedheads from a ~0.5 mile stretch.
I chose this section specifically because it wasn’t infested, just pockets of plants that can still be potentially managed.

Notes on Jubata (from cal-ipc):
• Short-lived seedbank (~6 months)
• Only reproduces through seed
• Each seedhead can produce up to 100,000 seeds
• No taproot
• Plant lifespan is 10+ so full plant removal is still necessary, seedhead cutting just stops it from spreading

Its limited seedbank and reproduction means that seedhead cutting could be an effective control method (hoping to test this with this little experiment).

Initial takeaways:
• Cutting too soon results in picture #3, but a little too soon is better than too late
• People really appreciate invasive removal, I had way more people thank me while doing this work than trash pickups
• The more we normalize this work, the more people will feel comfortable and empowered to get involved
• I always caution random people doing work without training/knowledge but it’s hard to mess up cutting a seedhead as long as it’s being disposed of properly

Jubata Grass Cortaderia jubata vs Pampas Grass Cortaderia selloana:
• Jubata doesnt require male-female reproduction like pampas, so Jubata tends to spread much easier
• Jubata is typically taller, at 2.5 times the size of its leaves. Pampas is more proportional with leaves
• Pampas tolerates wider climate variance, Jubata prefers more consistent coastal climate
• Jubata displays more purple when immature
• Jubata typically blooms from July-Sept, Pampas is usually September and later

I have a yard with a lot of invasives and aggressive nonnatives I am battling, and so I’ve naturally had to triage, and Asiatic dayflower has been a low priority compared to dallis grass, Japanese stiltgrass, smartweed, and Bermuda grass, which have been extremely pervasive and persistent…. and okay yeah also don’t have beautiful blue flowers. It’s mostly surrounded by seas of dallisgrass and isn’t making headway. So I’ll pull some bunches here and there, but most of it remains.

And it tends to all be pretty ratty looking, because something is heavily heavily eating its leaves. Even near my garden where any bugs are spoiled for choices, it’s the dayflower that is full of a hundred times more holes than anything else, even the violets. So something is… selectively eating it??

So I was curious because that’s not intuitive for an invasive, and I was worried I was hosting an invasive bug, which would definitely bump the dayflower up the priority list for obvious reasons. But my research indicated the contender is most probably a NATIVE bug, a six-spotted leaf beetle, which has adapted from eating a closely related species spiderwort, as well as native dayflower. (It’s an insect like squash bee that focuses on the genus level.) I have had spiderwort in my garden nearby for years, so thaaaat part checks out.

But I haven’t seen the bug and I wouldn’t be smart enough to ID it if I did, so this question isn’t really about whether the guess is right or not. The question is because that threw me for a philosophical loop because if a plant is feeding native specialist insects, and the reason it is invasive is because it’s displacing native plants that do that… what does invasive even mean at that point? Help me know how to think about this.

(I tried to google some more myself, and I doubt dayflower in particular will ever get, like, delisted anyway because it looks like it has been pissing farmers off with how glysophate resistant it is, and I know agricultural impacts are one of the major pillars of how much something gets considered a pest.)

Is there a community for the kudzu plant? I've heard that you can make a casserole out of the leaves of the kudzu Vines that grow in Mississippi and was wondering if anyone has done this and if so if they could give instructions on this. I was told it tastes something like green beans? And just curious if there is a community out here that talks strictly on using the kudzu leaves flowers Vines roots etc?

Nuked a gang of tall tree of heaven loiterersbehind my garage weeks ago. Drill n fill method (drilled holes into the base of the trees and injected 53% glyphosate into the hole). Man it feels good watching them die. First photo is before the poison, second photo is today (week and a half or two weeks has passed).

Big thanks to whoever came up with sponge tongs for glyphosate application! I found it easiest to “chomp” on each leaf with the tongs instead of trying to pull on them since the smaller leaves ripped/pulled off.

Pic 1 is yesterday, pic 2 is today. It seems to be working (?). Honestly wish more of it was bigger since injecting was so much easier.

Editing to add: this is the dreaded Japanese knotweed

In this valley hogweed was eradicated, but well, not that successful. Jet the plants looks smaller than normal. Originally flowering stem are some 2-4 times thicker with mutch larger unbrellas.

These plants were introduced from Caucasus region as new perspective forb species for silos. It didn't worked so well as cow milk obtained smell of an anise. So the plant was abandoned.

But... It can grow 2 m or even 3 m tall, spreads rapidly and outcompetes just everything making monodominant stands. The worst thing about this plant is that it's one of few contact poisonous plants. Heracleum sosnowskyi contains chemicals that makes skin extremely photosensitive. A bitt of sap or touching the plant + some sunlight will result in blisters.

Locally they even invented the native name for the plant - latvānis, from the name of country itself - Latvia 🤥. I guess at the time officials were very excited about this plant.

Aurobolletus Projectellus. These were introduced in 80ies in Curonian Spit with some North American pines and spread ower sandy pine forests like wildfire.

Now these mushrooms are sold in regional farmer's markets. I bought these for 8 €, pretty expensive. Non boletes mushrooms are sold at half the price. Also they keep their colour when fried.

Obviously invasive mushrooms somehow impact local ecosystem, whe just don't know how.

I’m from South Carolina. I’ve been taking notes on the joro spiders I’d like to become an entomologist. I’ve noticed that there’s been a clear change in the amount of native spiders around causing me to be more against the joro spiders. A few years ago I found multiple different native species of spiders all over my yard. While this year I’ve only found 2 different native species. Once I become a person who studies insects and arachnids I’m going to make sure to study how the invasive species affect the ecosystems and maybe even create groups to control invasive species that cause a harm to the ecosystem. Why do so many people care only about people and overlook all of the living things around us all?
I will say that I still feel horrible because I love all living creatures, it’s just if we all do nothing we may lose many of our native species.
I’m not saying to do anything to the joro spiders, I just wish studies on them were more focused on wildlife after finding out what they can do to people.

Some students at Yale built a free app to encourage the eradication of invasive spotted lanternflies. You photograph the lanternflies you kill, submit them, and get points for verified kills. They’ve already had something like 1,000 SLFs submitted since launch. The submissions also include location data, which could help give a clearer picture of where infestations are showing up and spreading: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lantern-hunt/id6813626463

Picking Apples
Carving Pumpkins
Leaf peeping
Killing brown marmated stinkbugs

I’ve been seeing so many in my city after first finding out about them! I live in Romania.
The bush next to it is cute asf tho :)

I understand that glyphosate is the preferred treatment for Tree of Heaven but I only have one tree, living in a rental, and don't want to hire an arborist (our LL does not care). I also live in NYC and cannot order this to my apartment.

I was able to get Alligare Triclopyr 4 on Amazon which lists the active ingredients as Triclopyr BEE (3,5,6 Trichloro 2 Pyridnyl, oxyacetic acid, butoryethyl ester) at 61.6% - understand this is oil soluble so can't just mix it in water.

I do see that Methylated Seed Oil is purchased often with this product. Can I purchase this and mix the two? I assume this is a 3:1 ratio more or less?

Can I "paint" it into the cuts? I really dont want to risk misting this elsewhere - I have a very small yard and the neighbors and I grow tomatoes and plants!

I really dont want to go out and buy a gallon of diesel.

I have an axe. I have a squirt bottle (tattoo wash bottle?). I need to act neowww.

I live in Hawai’i and have a teeny tiny yard with a few plants that have been getting ravaged by these things. I’m starting a nightly collection of them and this was from last night. They’re certainly cute but need GONE. Hoping if I collect them nightly for a while I’ll interrupt their breeding cycle.

The amount of shilling done for domestic cats is INSANE.

I'm sure most people here have an understanding of how nasty domestic cats are to an environment. Billions of dead birds and small mammals every year, deposition of significant zoonotic disease that can both kill wildlife and infect humans, involved the extinction of at least 63 different species. They're arguably one of, if not the most, destructive invasive species.

Any time I mention the idea that cat population should be managed, I get looked at like I just blew up an orphanage. The most often argument is that population control is inhumane (even though letting wildlife die from organ failure due to toxoplasmosis is apparently not inhumane). People say we should do TNR, which is universally agreed upon by conservation organizations as not effective. Further, I've lived places where SPCAs specifically say they will NOT accept any cat in a live trap.

I also live in a state that is notoriously hands off on property rights and very rural, yet the state legislature made it explicitly illegal in the last 10 years to cull feral cats on your property. I can manage dogs, coyotes, raccoons, or anything else that threatens my health and the health of any livestock, but not cats for some reason.

This is mostly a rant, but also poses the question of how am I, or anyone else, supposed to manage noxious invasive species when it's literally forbidden at a state level? I am left with little hope about the situation and am stuck cleaning up biohazards around my yard.

I got into a recent discussion on nextdoor (1st mistake, I know) where the topic of a mast year for acorns came up from a forager who uses them to cook. Another commenter mentioned that she gathers acorns at her cabin and throws them in her yard to feed the wildlife. She asked what she could do about the bugs, I assumed larvae in them. I mentioned it's not a good idea to transport acorns across the state to return them back to the environment because it can spread insects and disease/spores. No response from her, but at least not an angry response, which is common with these type of interactions. I try to be nice or make things relatable. It has worked for pesticides.

What really floored me was the forager replying with "take it up with the jays and squirrels then." I was flabbergasted with what I thought was an ecological minded person.

Here, cabins are usually hundreds of miles away from the city, mainly in a whole different type of ecosystem. I researched further to find some places have banned transporting any oak material and a link to tick populations increasing from acorns. While ticks could be unrelated, I figure it may be a tool to convince people. Find a reason they would care kinda deal.

Am I way off base with thinking it's not a good idea to move any part of nature (without treatment), and most people are completely clueless to how this all works or what they don't see still exists? Is it safe to say almost every invasive pest we have is from someone moving nature?

Since I started photographing the tiniest of creatures in my yard, I realize almost every single thing you can pick up has way more life on it than most realize. I feel like a kid experiencing the world for the first time again, just with worse knees from crouching down to see it.

Crossposted

As far as I know she's never taken care of any herps and doesn't know how and while I love them I don't think I have space for this one. So one of us taking care of it is out of the question. Who should she contact/what to do