{"id":1631,"date":"2009-11-23T14:20:42","date_gmt":"2009-11-23T19:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iomaire.com\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2009-11-23T15:21:17","modified_gmt":"2009-11-23T20:21:17","slug":"private-enemy-no-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/2009\/11\/23\/private-enemy-no-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Private Enemy No. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was in Floyd last summer for the first time, I was astonished at how lush and green the woods were. At the time, I had no idea how much of that lushness had been contributed by an invasive exotic vine, Oriental Bittersweet (celastrus orbiculatus<\/em>), which was identified for me by Jason Rutledge a year ago. This picture, taken by Chris Evans<\/a>, is a fair picture of the tangles of vines that I found on this trip. <\/p>\n

\"Oriental<\/p>\n

I brought along a pair of Felco 23 loppers and a Felco 610 pruning saw and cut, over a period of 5 days, about 1,000 vines. Some of the vines were 3.5″ in diameter and had to be sawn. I had numerous instances where I found a tangle of vines such as is shown in this picture. The picture below shows a very small vine that I missed at first but cut on my last morning in Floyd.<\/p>\n

\"Oriental<\/p>\n

You can see it twining around another vine on the tree in the foreground – it is only about .75″ in diameter, but given time, would grow much bigger. I gave no quarter to my enemy – I cut it and yanked it out by the roots, something that I didn’t do for 99% of the rest of the vines. To do so would have meant weeks of labor. I am satisfied that, if nothing else, I have set the oriental bittersweet back a good ways – it will take several years to make its presence known in a big way and by then, I’ll be living on the property and will be able to aggressively deal with it. In the meantime, the trees will have been given a reprieve from the smothering vines and will be able to flourish for the first time in many years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was in Floyd last summer for the first time, I was astonished at how lush and green the woods were. At the time, I had no idea how much of that lushness had been contributed by an invasive …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,79,80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1641,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/1641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iomaire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}