The Southington Citizen | southingtoncitizen.com
Friday, April 30, 2021
A17
Event targets spread of invasive species At left: Val Guarino, president of the Southington Land Trust, talks about mugwort, an invasive plant species growing in abundance near the train depot along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail in Southington.
By Devin Leith-Yessian Record-Journal staff
The Southington Land Conservation Trust held its annual weeding day in an effort to prevent the spread of harmful flora. “They all seem to be very aggressive,” land trust President Val Guarino said. “They crowd out the native plants...”
Photos by Dave Zajac, Record-Journal
Volunteers and land trust members met at the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail near the Burritt Street on Saturday to remove invasive species, as well as to collect trash along the trail. Some of the most prevalent invasive species include mugwort, garlic mustard and Japanese knotweed.
Below: Mugwort, an invasive plant species growing in abundance near the train depot along the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail in Southington.
It’s become necessary for volunteers to return to the same spots to remove the invasive species over and over because of how prolific some can be.
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“The garlic mustard seeds can stay in the ground able to grow for 10 years and each plant can make up to one thousand seeds,” Guarino said.
See Event, A18
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Additional information on native plants, invasive plants and gardening best practices can be found at:
https :// www.speakingoflandscapes.com/ https ://www.healthyyards.org/ www.HomegrownNationalPark.org http://cipwig.uconn.edu/
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plant tags and research your purchases. Plan to do maintenance. If you don’t want any maintenance, then you want hardscaping, said Connolly. That’s stone and fences and the like, she said.
If you intend to use a landscaper, look at their credentials, for example, are they “Certified Horticulturalist” or “ISA Certified Arborist” or “Certified Professional Landscape Designers.”
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According to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, a non-native species is considered invasive if it can "exhibit an aggressive growth habit Val Guarino, president of the Southington Land Trust, shows a garlic mustard plant. and can out-compete and displace native species." animals up the food ear trail by local organizaAs invasive species chain, impacting the entire tions. In Southington, crowd out native plants, ecosystem. they’ve planted five beds it deprives insects of their with native flora such as gray habitats and causes fauna To counter the effect, the birch trees and chokeberry populations to plummet. As land trust has been helping bushes, which provide food insect populations decline, it with a pollinator pathway reduces the food available to being planted along the lin-
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