Creation Care News: Invasive Honeysuckles

Church of the Holy Comforter | November 6, 2023

If Creation Care is so concerned about planting trees, then why did we recently remove one?

The tree in question was a Honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii), and it was at the end the lower end of top parking lot. The trouble was that, like invasive plants generally, it was all take, and very little give. (You’ll see it’s picture later in this story.)

We have been removing Honeysuckle since at least 2020. Here is a picture that was taken during that process. You can see the dense growth in the more distant part of the photo.

The Honeysuckle is preventing everything (apart from the also-invasive Porcelainberry) from growing here.

That means that birds can’t find their preferred shrubs and they have to build their nests in the Honeysuckle. That would seem like a good thing, wouldn’t it? But apparently because of the characteristic curve of the Honeysuckle branches, there is easy access for predators, including snakes. So we have fewer baby birds.

Those birds that survive are rewarded with sweet red berries.

Great! We’ve finally found a benefit! The birds happily eat the berries, fly away and deposit the seeds at a distance. That way the need of the honeysuckle to proliferate is being met.

But what about the birds? It turns out that the berries contain too much sugar and not enough fat to meet the birds’ energy requirements. Oh, no!

So these Honeysuckles are taking too much, and not giving enough. They have to go to make room for plants that contribute more to the ecosystem.

The tree at the end of the parking lot was too large for the loppers we’ve been using, and required the use of a chain saw to get it down. So on the "Third Saturday Workday" in October, a stalwart group of volunteers got to work.

They took the tree down to its base They took the large branches into the woods and built a brush pile for wildlife to find shelter.

They collected the berries into 16 trash bags—they could not leave them on site, or make them into compost, for fear the seeds would germinate.

And then they planted two American Hazelnuts.

So although we did a remove a tree, we have replaced it with two more. We’ll be able to watch them grow as we drive by each week.

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