TheMondayGarden.com

It’s not a real street, so it doesn’t have a real street name; it’s sort of the long parking lot/access way at the back of an apartment complex with exits at each end connecting to parallel streets. When I was in high school in the 1960’s, I walked down the alley to catch my bus; today I live around the corner. Along one side, there’s a patch 25 vertical parking spaces long and about 4 car lengths wide that’s an undevelopable wooded gully between the alley and the next lot.

I’ve called this tiny gully “the squirrels’ garden” because everything here came by squirrel, bird or wind. A proper garden in the Biblical sense, it teems with an awesome array of life. The far-distant ancestors of the resident squirrels, I’m sure, planted the prolific and majestic red oak at the east end of the patch, and the almost as grand, and squirrel-beloved, shaggy bark hickory at the west end. (I away know it’s autumn by the sound of nuts bouncing off the parked cars.)

The wind definitely brought the winged seeds of the Norway maple, the ash, and, probably, the aspen, ailanthus, elm and catalpa. The jays, crows, mockingbirds, catbirds, sparrows, robins, finches, woodpeckers, and cardinals are the likely donators of the choke cherry, crabapple, mulberry, wineberry, rosa multiflora, Asiatic bittersweet, horse nettle, nightshade, woodbine, poison ivy , pokeberry, Queen Anne's Lace, loosestrife, asters, jewelweed, Goldenrod, Ragweed, Mugwort and other assorted weeds of summer.

I don’t know who contributed the garlic mustard ’cause no one’s quite sure how it spreads - just that it most certainly does; it might have come by car tire.

This little Eden is suffering slow death by porcelainberry. Year-by-year, the vine is overwhelming everything else, even the other invaders. Under the thick mat of vines, there’s a rouges’ gallery of invasives that deserve smoothing, in my not-so-humble opinion. (Although, it must be admitted that outgrowing rosa mulitflora, wineberry, Asiatic bittersweet and ailanthus is impressive.) Unfortunately, there’s also crabapple, chokecherry, catalpa, aspen.

Now, here’s the squirrel’s problem. Porcelain berry fruit ripens early fall and it’s gone in a month. In another year or two, only the red oak and hickory will be above “flood level”. These stalwart trees will feed the squirrels with early spring buds and fall nuts but what about the rest of the year? And what about the birds? The vines provide plenty of habitat but what’s to eat?

So if what we do in our gardens ruins the wild ones’ garden, what then? Birds and squirrels can’t tell deadly invaders from “play nicely with others” natives. So if you and I don’t control what’s in our garden and help clean up the uncultivated areas, what then? Won’t be Eden any more.

You might first see a porcelainberry seedling in your garden and think “How nice, a wild grape”. Don’t be fooled! While the foliage looks a bit like its grape relatives, porcelainberry leaves are smaller, with rounder and more deeply cut sinuses (the concave indentations in the leaf’s border). If you don’t pull porcelainberry up immediately, it develops long, thick, drought-proof taproots that are hard to dig out.

Porcelainberry, also known as amur peppervine, a member of the grape family, is hardy zone 4 to 8; and doesn’t care about soil conditions but prefers a bit of shade and moisture. It’s supposed to grow “only” 15” vines but I’ve seen it much longer. Japanese beetles eat it (for them, it’s food from home) but don’t do nearly enough damage to be useful control.

Despite having become the kudzu for the Northeastern USA, unbelievably, the stuff’s still being sold to the unsuspecting by nurseries and on-line. Porcelainberry has two native cousins in the Southeast, Ampelopsis arborea (peppervine) and Ampelopsis cordata (heartleaf peppervine, possum grape or raccoon grape). There’s an Asian cousin Ampelopsis aconitifolia (monkshood vine) being widely sold as an ornamental; but who’s to say that it won’t become as dangerous as porcelainberry?

Since porcelainberry spreads between locations only by seed, if you keep it cut down so that it can’t flower, you can at least contain it. Large plants can’t be effectively dug since each root fragment left behind starts a new plant. Mowing it to the ground 3 or 4 times a season can be effective. See The Monday Garden Issue 110 (Japanese Knotweed), Issue 112(Barberry and Winged Euonymus). and Issue 126 (Asiatic Bittersweet) on controlling invasives with black plastic (best early in season) and with herbicides (best in early fall).

For The Monday Garden "Eat An Invader Today" club, porcelainberry buds, leaves and fruit are said to be edible, if you can find them growing in an unpolluted place.

Picture: ripe porcelainberry fruit	picture: porcelainberry in Hoyt Street Alley July 2004

Caution: Never eat any plant grown near a road or driveway. Heavy metals from car exhausts poison the ground and end up in the plants for decades. Equally dangerous are plants grown near industrial sites, dumps, and the like.

Note: this article updates and replaces Issue 31 (October 27, 2002)

Great picture of the squirrel! Diane (LA)


Your porcelain berry article is wonderful. I was laughing out loud and the number of flora that you can identify is amazing. Iiz (CT)

Brilliantly written, very wittily, I might add. I loved the picture of the squirrel being interviewed on site. Happy that we have such upstanding, red-blooded members of society who are out there, despite the menace of an orange terror of porcelainberry alert, going about their business and not letting homosexual marriage undermine their values. Marc (CT)

So good to see the photos from Hoyt Street Alley where we've walked. A shame the diverse plants are being choked out by the short-season food bearing invader. It's two weeks until my trek through the Shenandoah National Park .. Gregg (NY)

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