Mustard blooming trailside in Los Padres National Forest, growing where we’ve never seen it before. “Like other mustards, black mustard grows profusely and produces allelopathic chemicals that prevent germination of native plants. The spread of black mustard can increase the frequency of fires in chaparral and coastal sage scrub, changing these habitats to annual grassland.” —California Invasive Plant Council “. . .Whether introduced unknowingly by pioneers 200 years ago, or more recently by worldwide commerce and travel, the spread of invasive alien plants into State Park System lands is reaching crisis levels. . . .Without the natural enemies of their original habitats, invasive exotic species can spread rapidly and out-compete California native species, thereby upsetting natural ecosystem processes. —California State Parks “Invasive exotic plants are one of the most serious threats to natural resources in national parks. They are able to reproduce in great numbers, rapidly colonize new areas, displace native species, and alter ecosystem processes across multiple scales.” —National Park Service Where humans go, so too the mustard. We’ve never seen so much mustard covering so many places all around the County of Santa Barbara, city and country. The noxious weed spreads in remarkable, unnerving fashion. Mustard recently covered our backyard, where it hadn’t been before. We now wage an ongoing battle to merely keep it at bay, two years into the war, a vain attempt to eradicate the beastly weed altogether. Complete removal seems impossible without constant vigilance and an exceptional amount of manual labor or resorting to chemical warfare, which we’re loath to do and have not done. No Roundup glyphosate biocide for us. Turn your back for a moment, it seems, and there sprouts or resprouts a new mustard bloom waving in the breeze like a mischievous hand saying hello, yet again. And this is just in our yard, to say nothing of national forest, wilderness areas, and still other public lands. Pacific sea fog filling Santa Ynez Valley amid the San Rafael and Santa Ynez Mountains basking in a Mediterranean Climate. “571 plants have completely disappeared from the wild, more than twice the number of birds, mammals and amphibians combined . . . Most people can name a mammal or bird that has become extinct in recent centuries, but few can name an extinct plant . . . The scientists found the highest rates of plant extinction to be on islands, in the tropics and in areas with a Mediterranean climate – typical biodiverse regions which are home to many unique species vulnerable to human activities. . . . These results suggest that the increase in plant extinction rate could be due to the same factors that are documented as threats to many surviving plants: fragmentation and destruction of native vegetation resulting in the reduction or loss of habitat of many range-restricted species.” —Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew: Almost 600 plants have gone extinct in the last 250 years – Why should we care? (2019) This year we’ve found the first ever few mustard shock troops sprouting and rearing up in the front yard. We’re being overrun and overwhelmed right outside our front door. Consider the problem at large across the state and the difficulty managing this menace. The small individual flowers form on long stems, many at a time, each tiny bloom maturing rapidly, but sequentially, over a sustained period, the seeds dropping for weeks on end like paratroopers dropped deep into allied territory. Seeds may last decades and still sprout, research shows. Dormant splinter cells awaiting activation. Should the plant get a roothold growing into dense native soil, it becomes impossible to rip out, no matter how strong a person might be or how much force they can bring to bear. This is not an exaggeration. I’ve tried many times wrestling these weeds from hardpacked earth with both gloved hands tightly gripped around the stalk, yanking and pulling, teeth clenched, lips drawn, floundering around like a lunatic in the field, and failing miserably. A fellow might be more apt to pull a sword from a stone than a mature mustard plant from the ground. Should a person mow or weed whack the plant down to its crown at soil level, it rapidly regrows sending out yet more flower stems, like the flags of a victorious power holding ground in the face of an onslaught, leveraging its asymmetrical advantages. To the brink of obsessive madness, the vile weed pushes me like the whale did Ahab. The neighbors must be amused at the sight or maybe concerned. Curvaceous beauty seen from Bitter Creek National Wildlife Refuge, Kern County. “It’s got to stop right now! Nip it. Nip it in the bud.” “I say this calls for action and now. Nip it in the bud.” “Now the minute it looks like there’s gonna be trouble. We got to nip it! Nip! It! In! The! Bud!” —Deputy Barney Fife This cycle of nipping it in the bud plays out for months, the mustard continuing with insidious insistence to sprout new flower stem after new flower stem, ever shorter depending on rainfall, to tiny stems of a mere several inches long if need be, and still then throw a payload of seed. All summer long we battle the mustard that sprouts from winter rains, and into the fall, until winter once more waters them again, giving them yet another renewed burst of growth. The plant might reach higher than six feet if allowed, thick and woody and covering our yard as a dense forest. If clipped numerous times but the tuberous root not fully removed, it rises to mere inches in height, yet still there and able to procreate. Mustard boasts a remarkable biological comparative advantage relative most other native plants, or anything, really. One must begrudgingly admit the vile weed performs its duty with impressive vigor and resilience. Baby blue eyes (Nemophila menziesii), Figueroa Mountain The mustard army is on an unstoppable march, long ago seeded in the state, and sapping ever further into the once fortified strongholds of native plants, conquering and colonizing new places, sprouting where we haven’t seen it before. Clearing a pathway through native vegetation all too often invites encroachment by exotics. We see mustard growing along forest roads and trails, which serve well as avenues of expansion to increase its range, a stowaway going wherever we go, on our vehicles, on our animals, on our shoes and clothing. That is not intelligence by human standards, but it is indeed smartness on another level. Something along the lines of what Michael Pollan wrote about 25 years ago in his book, Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World. The plant appears to know what it wants and how to get there to get it and it succeeds wildly. We see mustard growing along creeks and rivers in national forest lands and in designated wilderness areas, miles from roads and far off-trail, its yellow flowered stems waiving tauntingly in the breeze, Ahoy, yes, we’ve made it here, too! And thank you. An insect-eaten calochortus kennedyi at elevation in Chumash Wilderness, representative of the traditional Japanese aesthetic, wabi-sabi (侘び寂び), where beauty is found in natural imperfection. “Long-term management needs include improving: 1) Resilience of vegetation to wildfires and overall improvement of forest health by reducing fuels and reintroducing fire on the landscape using prescribed fire; 2) Community and infrastructure protection by reducing fuels adjacent to communities, Forest Service facilities, communication sites, roads, motorized trails, property boundaries, and strategic fuelbreaks; and 3) Wildfire containment opportunities by establishing and maintaining fuelbreaks, defense zones, and maintaining general forested areas in strategic locations. —U.S. Forest Service, Los Padres National Forest Ecological Restoration Project #62369 [later renamed: Wildfire Risk Reduction Project] The Forest Service, as led by Christopher J. Stubbs, argued that ecological restoration and protection requires industrial-scale raking of forest detritus, removal of deadwood and logging, and the establishment of firebreaks. Tellingly, they renamed their euphemistic plan from restoration to risk reduction; an apparent attempt to make it more palatable to a local public population that expressed deep skepticism and strong opposition in great numbers. Preventative measures, they say, to reduce the chance of exceptionally hot burning, stand replacing wildfire sweeping the land clear of everything, including the largest and oldest iconic trees. We do not advocate the protection of native plants over that of people, to be clear. But questions arise based on common sense, informed by the common experiences of common folk and their simple observations in the field. Will the Project #62369 plan for Pine Mountain in Ventura County invite invasive exotic weeds deeper into the forest to “spread rapidly and out-compete California native species, thereby upsetting natural ecosystem processes,” as California State Parks warns? Will weeds “reproduce in great numbers, rapidly colonize new areas, displace native species, and alter ecosystem processes across multiple scales,” as National Parks warns? Will the plan serve to “increase the frequency of fires in chaparral and coastal sage scrub,” as the California Native Plant Council warns can happen with black mustard. Red penstemon, Pine Mountain Little Miss E on Pine Mountain, Ventura County. The opposing sides in the dispute over the plan each have their own chosen group of scientific scholars with their own published peer reviewed studies to lean on, as is often typical of such policy arguments. We shall bear witness to the results, for better or worse. A common refrain we hear from the Forest Service is that they’re understaffed and underfunded. We agree. Yet, the federal government says they will somehow nevertheless properly manage and maintain what conditions they create as a direct result of their new firebreaks. But the Forest Service appears to contradict itself in remarkable fashion in their own document, Ecological Restoration Project (Renamed Wildfire Risk Reduction Project) #62369. Their word of promise provides little if any comfort. This confusion undermines their credibility and calls into question their competence and true motives, as will be addressed in a future post on this weblog. Moreover, from what we’ve seen in practice through decades in the field afoot, we don’t believe the United States Forest Service has it in them to maintain much of anything, let alone the new corridors of entry into the forest they’re opening up, through which invasive plants may vigorously spread. Phacelia crenulata, Santa Ynez Riverbed Post Script John Hankins, over at the local Sierra Club chapter, has a brief in the latest Condor Call newsletter (April-May) listing alternative methods of weed removal. They include: Pelargonic Acid, Vinegar (47%), Salt, Iron-based Herbicides, Corn Gluten Meal, Flame Weeding, Mulching and Soil Solarization, Essential Oils (Clove, Citric, Orange)
