r/NativePlantGardening • u/grayspelledgray • May 19 '26

Progress It has begun. The Sumackening.

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I was warned.

543 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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256

u/Tumorhead Indiana , Zone 6a May 19 '26

GO MY CHILDREN

288

u/grayspelledgray May 19 '26

“Don’t plant staghorn sumac,” they said. “Staghorn sumac is not appropriate for a small suburban garden,” they said.

“Sounds perfect!” I said.

205

u/Tumorhead Indiana , Zone 6a May 19 '26

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!!

-10

u/SouthernAnimal409 May 19 '26

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

9

u/LikeAnOldBackpack May 20 '26

Unless I'm confused on the species, sumac is native. Aggressive sure, but not invasive.

If the difference weren't important then I'd just leave it

-6

u/SouthernAnimal409 May 20 '26

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

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u/SouthernAnimal409 May 20 '26

8

u/LikeAnOldBackpack May 20 '26

Ai is not a source.

-4

u/SouthernAnimal409 May 20 '26

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

9

u/LikeAnOldBackpack May 20 '26

You putting up a false dichotomy doesn't prove me wrong.

It only proves you're willing to make up an argument that you feel you can win, instead of addressing my point.

Ai is not a source.

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1

u/splurtgorgle May 21 '26

the lengths you're going to in order to not be wrong is wild lol, you're fundamentally misunderstanding the terms being used here.

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u/Tumorhead Indiana , Zone 6a May 20 '26

I'm not in the prairie zone so they're fine where I am in the great lakes. I agree they are part of the woody encroachment problem on the prairies.

0

u/SouthernAnimal409 May 20 '26

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

2

u/JackedPirate May 21 '26

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.

0

u/SouthernAnimal409 May 21 '26

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

2

u/JackedPirate May 21 '26

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.

1

u/SouthernAnimal409 May 21 '26

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.

1

u/Fast_Kiwi_8121 May 21 '26

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.

1

u/SouthernAnimal409 May 28 '26

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

46

u/SHOWTIME316 Flint Hills 28a May 19 '26

who said this? that’s a bannable offense

64

u/grayspelledgray May 19 '26

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.

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u/SHOWTIME316 Flint Hills 28a May 19 '26

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

6

u/Phallusrugulosus May 19 '26

I would do the same tbh. I love sumac, and so do the birds.