INVASIVE PLANTS

A Scourge on the Land

This is what happens when a municipality ignores a problem. These pictures show scenes in Bryson City, North Carolina, where kudzu runs rampant. (Click or tap an image to expand it.)

Kudzu is rapidly taking over Bryson City. The town is an ecological disaster. The problem grows by the day. [In spring and summer, kudzu shoots can grow one foot per day.]

Cary has several isolated areas where kudzu is growing. It nevertheless should be classified and addressed as an immediate problem. In Cary, our "more" immediate plant-species problems are Chinese and Japanese privet, Chinese wisteria, English ivy, and bamboo. These are spreading, and spreading rapidly in many places.

In 2023 or '24 I filed a 311 Complaint against Bainbridge Place, a townhome development located on Old Apex Road just east of Cary Parkway. During construction, bamboo took root and spread over the lot.

No action was taken on the complaint. The Town doesn't regulate growth on private residential property – even if it is highly invasive and reproduces prodigiously.

The bamboo crossed the property line and now infests the buffer of Parkway Pointe Shopping Center. It has moved to the north and is infiltrating the tree buffer in back of the houses on Bright Angel Drive. It hopped Old Apex Road to the south and is spreading both east and west along the railroad tracks. Below are images of Bainbridge Place as seen from the rear parking lot of Parkway Pointe Shopping Center. (Click or tap to enlarge.)

In 1932 Bertram Whittier Wells wrote, in his seminal work (and must reading for those interested in conservation), Natural Gardens of North Carolina:

"The North Carolinian of today, who speeds across the open country in his fast car, can hardly imagine what his state was like when the original forest covered it. At the time Columbus was becoming acquainted with America's shoreline, the plants were in almost complete domination of this country. Over vast areas stretched the unbroken forest. On the trails through it, one could travel for days without a good view of the sun, and at night the constellations could seldom be seen because of the interfering canopy of high verdure." [pp. 89-90].

Dr. Wells would be appalled at what he would see in Cary in 2025. He chronicled the beginning of the degradation of its natural beauty when he wrote of the results of Cary town founder Frank Page's failure to re-plant Longleafs and other noble hardwoods after clear cutting them:

"Of unusual interest in forest distribution is the problem of the pines, especially the loblolly pine, which has enlarged its range greatly in the last seventy-five years. Originally it was dominant only in the northeastern corner of the state. At the present, following the practical annihiliation of the longleaf pine forests and the great reduction of the deciduous woody vegetations of both coastal plain and piedmont, the loblolly pine has largely taken over these areas . . . ." [p. 91].

The Loblolly pine, classified as a native tree, is nevertheless aggressive. [I'm told that native species cannot properly be deemed invasive, only aggressive.] These Loblollys now dominate Cary's wooded areas, and grace us each spring with clouds of yellow-green pollen that gets in our eyes and our hair and our houses and cars.

The solution to this problem – best attacked by a Cary Department of the Environment – is to begin to raise the inferior quality of our urban forest by gradual replacement of the low-grade Loblollys with Longleafs and other noble hardwood trees in our buffers and forested open spaces. This will not provide benefit to the older members of our community, but can serve as a gift to future generations. Having the problem addressed by a Department of the Environment would insure that a specific person or persons would be assigned the task, they would be assigned a specific time to work on the task, and would be provided the specific tools needed to complete the task.