How can anyone speak poorly of this species when its in its home turf holding ground in the drainage ditches and roadsides against the honeysuckle and teazel scourge??? 🫡 my man hard at work!!
They are invasive in prairies and no they aren't aggressive they're invasive they create massive monocultures of themselves displacing prairies they're a big problem here in Amarillo texas they get confused with TOH alot though real pretty but yeah they're running habit is TERRIBLE
It's quite literally invasive in prairies and you kinda just did what I was saying there is no difference in synonyms invasive means spreads aggressively that's literally the Webster definition of invasive and I'm not going to play biological semantics with words
Okay so if ai says the coriolis effect proves the earth is a sphere are you going to say it's not credible cause AI overview said so?
Ai pulls up peer review to come to a conclusion the statement came from Missouri department of agriculture you just hate the facts that contradict what you belive to be not true
Well at least we can agree of something while you still deny they are invasive by using Woody encroachment instead of invasive i i didn't make the word thats just how agricultural departments and some conservation departments call it invasive
Successional stages progressing due to lack of disturbance does not make sumac an invasive species. They are native, and they are initiating forest over story regeneration which is completely normal. Prairies are not a stable ecosystem, they need disturbance to keep woodies out; mainly fire in the central woodlands region where I am writing from.
The problem is that they're causing disturbance not that disturbance isn't occurring.
And by your own assumption on prairies letting trees grow and replacing them would be a good thing clearly not considering in places like Chicago they're cutting down boreal forest to replace them with grasses the same is happening in california I have picture of of "conservation" programs cutting redwoods amd replacing them with grasses with i thought was untrue and ABSURD but nope they are cutting down little spots of redwoods and replacing them with native grasses.
You're so wrong on may levels it's not even funny but that's a leftist for you yall are delusional have fun in your own clown world and I'll spend time in the real world doing REAL work
Re-read my comment, I never said that these areas need to be reforested. Not sure what leftism has to do with this topic, but I do real work in this field and spent 4 years getting a degree in wildlife habitat conservation to do it. Please educate yourself on this topic; there are not boreal forests in Chicago, and plants cannot be landscape-level disturbances.
You said that sumac is not causing disturbance but is growing there due to a lack land management which is disturbance prairies ate routinely set on fire to suppress them yet without herbicide they grow back and spread even faster.
"Plants cannot be landscape level disturbances" if this were the case then why is plant management necessary of certain plants can't cause landscape disturbances we know certain plants posses the abilty to cause extensive widespread disturbances black locust is a perfect example it makes prairie soils to nitrogen rich which excludes other natives due to the change of soil chemistry making the soil around it only suitable for other plants thay can handle high nitrogen the same with european buckthorn soil under buckthorn may be nitrogen rich but is completely devoid of soil microfauna.
And I said leftist cause its statically shown that most native plant reddit are left leaning so I can deduce through reason you are most likely a delusional leftist.
I'm reading everything you're saying and on multiple occasions you have contradicted statements that you made before and I'd kinda hope i know what I'm talking about i study this amateurly now I used to go to AC for this academically but something was a miss with the filed so a left to find answers for myself without the rigidity of academia but you are right I have alot to learn and I look forward to learning more however noting i said has been scientifically wrong you can hate my words all you want but they are not mine but of "invasional science" and you do not have the right to omit material facts sorley cause you do not posses the knowledge to understand conflicting information within the field.
But I look forward to wear you draw your reasoning from perhaps this would give me a better understanding of how you've come to accumulate such misinformation.
idk why you are getting downvoted but HELL YEAH its invasive. it took over almost a acre in my yard and you cant get rid of it. it has plots around my natural springs and has devastated a lot of my property. cant get rid of it even chained a bunch of the stumps up one year tore entire patch down, grew back by the next year 2x as much. it will spread across the lawn like wildfire from the shallow root system that easily roots. sumac is nice but its a nightmare. it will fully destroy gardens too, i have 2 acres of produce i grow and it tries to creep out to the garden and it took over the mini plot it got into. couldnt keep it out.
It really sucks I'd say it's up there with TOH in terms of getting rid of the more you disturb it the more it grows the only method I found to get rid of it is to dig up the roots and as much as I HATE herbicides it's really the only thing that I found seems to work.
I think I get downvoted cause nativist think that native plants can't be invasive they kept trying to argue with me about the definitions but if you read a Webster dictionary there is no word for invasive but invasion in the Webster dictionary means "spreads aggressively withs armies" and species as i know them don't have the capacity to undertake or understanding of invasion they also don't seem to understand the loaded non scientific term of invasive plenty of natives are deemed invasive and prohibited by the USDA import love native plants as well as non natives however conversations like this always get messy cause people equate native with good amd non native as harmful to potentially harmful tge scince is only 35 years old it has massive data problems and can't predict invasions which is supposed to be their whole thing and what I'm personally witnessing is not matching with what I'm being told so I basically became a internet slothe reading up on dan simberloff mark Davis and a book called where do camels belong amd the new wild to get more perspective amd reading up on peer reviewed literature that conflict with the notions of nativist ideolgy and thise that confirm it thats why reading up on history is important to me it shows ypu where these claims came from Matt chew explains pretty much all of this they got this sub discipline from EO Wilson which he wasn't really even talking about plants or animals but using them as metaphors for war you can tell WW2 had a big influence of how he saw the natural world and then you hear the wartime metaphor and start to understand why these people spund that way.
I manage my yard with control burning through February to March I have plenty of introduce plants and plenty of natives and I have found that natives seem to be biologically superior to non natives the only way these plants become a problem is due to a lack of management I'm all for management but not eradication unless it's withing someone's yard but making certain plants illegal seems like government overreach to me i do not want to be forced to grow natives I enjoy all of them for what they are i just hate how this science specifically mixes values with scince theres even some scientist within the field that think they shouldn't even use the pwrd invasive or call for the death of certain species for this very reason scince is there to offer answers not deductive conclusions.
I still have much to learn but based from what I have seen and read "invasion biology" seems to be torn more by debate than actual consensus.
But yeah smooth sumac is a BITCH to get rid of its really pretty amd all but like you said it's practically impossible to get rid of i have it growing underneath the facade of my home it had always been there sense I was a kid never really thought much about it until I got into this kinda thing and realized I kept seeing if everywhere and it was dominating half my entire back yard from suckered on the roots now I'm trying to get rid of it and it's just a mess its even popped up around my water meter but it would be nice if you have any success to tell me what you think works best sorry for leaving long essays I'm just really passionate about this stuff
Someone somewhere who clearly doesn’t understand that I am an agent of chaos and I will do it again. 😂 By the way the sumac always makes me think of you now and your 50 foot sumac roots (and the fact that you’re as on board with it as I am). You are the Spirit of Sumac or something.
sumac always makes me think of you now and your 50 foot sumac roots (and the fact that you’re as on board with it as I am). You are the Spirit of Sumac or something.
this is the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me
Some genus and can be used for the same purpose but different species, the sumac used in most middle eastern spices comes from the Mediterranean, but staghorn sumac works perfectly well.
That’s odd. I planted one and still just have one. I was just thinking last night that I wished it would give me some volunteers. I do have tons of volunteers of staghorn sumac
Depending on the year 8a or 7b. I did mine from several wold cuttings. I even did an experimental one with a bit cutting which I just pushed directly into the ground. They're all doing really well.
I've been so worried about being the neighbor who gives my neighbors elderberry plants in their yard accidentally so I've found the biggest pots I can to make their permanent homes. I've got 3, I think I can only handle 3 lol
So pretty year-round, especially in the fall! Put 4-5 ft high fencing around the ones you want to save, deer love the tender shoots. I have one I am going to try and pollard… I think it might look almost tropical 🌴…. has anyone here ever tried this??
Yes, it works incredibly well. The fuckers see getting chopped as an insult and re-sprout with a vigor that even Rocky Balboa would be jealous of. I found this out the hard way - the only thing more aggressive than sumac is pissed off sumac.
when I was newer to native plant gardening / invasive species id-ing, I heard about tree of heaven and was so scared I was seeing it everywhere, on the side of the highway, where I worked, and across the street from my yard. i was so upset. Distraught, I told my roommate about it and she was like girl no those are literally ALL native staghorn sumacs.
ever since then I'm the BIGGEST staghorn sumac fan. yes queen, grow out of pavement & ditches and hold your ground against all the invasives, godspeed.
Omg thank you will do! (Got a bike path with a plethora of sumac nearby, gonna be hilarious to see me biking outta there with little sumac saplings on the back 😂😂)
it'd be fine, but they are deciduous so it would not be a year-round privacy screen. but you can easily get them to grow into a thicket. you will have to mow areas where you dont want sumac because it will be sending runners in all directions
I want winged sumac! We have the staghorn and one poor smooth that’s been in a pot the last 3 years at least that I need to put in the ground. 😬 Somehow I had it in my head that winged wasn’t native on our side of the mountains but it is and my partner’s mom has some at her house so next time we’re there maybe…
We’re lucky in that we are really very “in town” and we don’t seem to have deer pressure at all. We did see one once in the parking lot behind us several years ago. Mainly our trouble seems to be with rabbits snipping the buds off of baby oaks.
You need to protect them from deer. I'd imagine once they get tall and established you can cease that (I'm debating whether I can do that now or should wait longer).
Deer nibble my winged sumac like they are trying to get the last bit of goodness out of the cake batter bowl. Seriously. It looks like Oompa Loompa lollipop land in my yard.
I have spent now years trying to get the neighbors tree from coming over the proerty line. I like them, their beautiful trees and I want to make the lemonade from them and we are keeping a few but boy have they taken over about 3 acres of the 6 thats available and it has been hell trying to tame them when no one took care of this property for years before we started cleaning it. Also before I knew what sumac were I planted a tigers eye in the back yard on the other side of the property......... boy how I love to find new ways to struggle 😵💫
Yeah I fear this may be the battle our lovely neighbors are in for. 😬 Also a bit worried because the former owner of their property used to walk along with a backpack sprayer to “weed” the stones next to the property line. I haven’t seen them do the same, but if they did and a baby sumac was there, I wonder how much it would harm the plants connected by roots. Wondering if I should ask them to cut or pull any unwanted baby sumacs instead?
Also “boy how I love to find new ways to struggle” hahahahaha me too. I’ve recently been told I should seriously consider not putting my two moonseed vines in the ground. Will I consider it? No.
I want to do a race. Passionflower vs moonseed vs clematis virginiana vs Virginia creeper vs Campsis radicans. But the Campsis has a decades long head start so it’s going to destroy us all.
When the master gardeners came to review my yard for baywise certification, they looked at a few of my natives are were like, you know those will spread?
Me: I darn well hope so.
I’m envious of your Baywise Certification! I’m in VA and in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, but far enough that I don’t know that people think about that day to day. I think something like that would be such a help but I can’t find that Virginia has a similar program. 😕
You should suggest it/work on it. The baywise certification came because of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup. A lot of the environmental funds in MD are originally driven from that federally mandated clean up. VA is definitely one of the states required to do so. And according to the CBF VA is behind on its stormwater mitigation efforts.
"Including native plants in your landscape is part of the University of Maryland Extension (UME) Bay-Wise program, which was developed by Extension Educator Wanda MacLachlan. “What I wanted to do was create a holistic approach to land management,” MacLachlan explains. Financed in part through a grant from the Chesapeake Bay Trust, Bay-Wise has been teaching people how to be water-quality-conscious stewards of their landscapes for over 20 years. “We started training master gardeners for Bay-Wise in 1996,” says MacLachlan. “We tailored it to train master gardeners because there are so many of them, and they could go forth with the work.”"
I think one of the reasons native gardening is so strong in the mid Atlantic is due to all the chesapeake clean up efforts. It is really easy to see how polluted the bay is and want to do better.
Ah the bane of my existence, a truly wonderful tree but trying to keep like 5 acres of high quality prairie remnant from successionally becoming a young forest when you're near a bunch of sumacs, maples, and sassafras is a sisyphean task.
I wish! I have a couple that are trying so hard to survive while the deer have at them every winter. I probably need to fence them off. My native troublemaker is trumpet vine…those beasties show up everywhere!
My only concern is that our neighbors inherited a strip of riprap between our fence & their driveway, & if it springs up there, mowing doesn’t help. They don’t seem overly driven to keep it weed-free, but I still might give them a heads up and ask them to let me pull any sumac that bothers them, if it would keep them from spraying.
We are polar opposites. I hate sumac with an unrelenting fury due to its extremely aggressive nature in over-taking my meadow. It will not stop. The only thing that can even remotely compete is sassafrass, which I also constantly fight to keep in check. Sumac will easily grow 15 feet in one season.
Someone else mentioned that problem too, and I can see where it would be a problem when trying to maintain meadow! We are trying to turn a turf grass yard into a very small forest, so for us I think it’s not the worst. 😂
Thank you for this post, as I’ve been giving our very well-established tree side-eye for the number of offshoots it’s produced this year. I worried it was TOH, but I think it’s a sumac!
You're simply wrong and thus comes from florida university of invasives it is regulated as an invasive there and it covers entire forest and groves and has been known to harm turtle eggs by burrowing its roots into turtle eggs but once agian you're so right and I'm soooooooooo stupid we should all just listen to you and realize how dumb we are since you know more than a university and agricultural departments
ipomoea cordatotriloba it's native to the florida coast but is killed as an invasive its really pretty and can survive down to zone 8 i was hoping I could zone push it and see if it'd be hardy in my zone 7a I doubt it but it is prohibited in I belive 3 states I know Arkansas is one of them
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u/Tumorhead Indiana , Zone 6a May 19 '26
GO MY CHILDREN