Stoloniferous rage
By Never teh BrideWhen The Beard and I first moved into our house, there was a decorative trellis set up in the back yard. It was supporting a network of vines springing forth from a main woody trunk growing right against the fence that divides our property from our neighbor’s property. At first, I left it alone thinking that it would eventually flower or so something interesting, but what a fool I was. If anything, I can only imagine that the trellis was our home’s former owner’s method of dealing with a force so malignant and ugly one can only camouflage its evil.
I’m talking about stolons. Oh, some stolons are nice enough…strawberry plants are stoloniferous, as are creeping buttercups. Others, however, do nothing useful and are determined to take over their host garden at all costs. Unlike rhizomes, which are in and of themselves a plant — at least according to Backyard Nature; other sites define them differently — stolons are just parts of a larger plant. The kicker is that a single piece of the stolon can grow into a big ol’ plant. Just when you think everything is pulled up, dug up, and gone for good, a new vine starts to grow from a three-inch long section of shoot.
Naturally, I did not know this. I was under the impression that you pull up as much of the nastyyucky root as you can and all of the ancillary bits will die off in time. After all, if you stop a heart from beating, the capillaries don’t go on living! But no, stolons are hardy little buggers with a will to survive that rivals that of the most highly stubborn animal.
When the weather here in Beverly was warm enough to allow for outdoor treks, I put on my gardening gloves, hefted my shears, and cut all of the vines off the trellis. Then I set about digging up the roots, which is when I found out just how far the shoots or stalks or whatever you want to call them traveled. I was ripping up long stretches of grass and scattering the soil in what were slated to be decorative beds. Bits and pieces of stolon not connected to any main root system were already sprouting new plants! It was a nightmare!
Or, rather, it still is a nightmare, because the original plant had spread its hellish tendrils practically everywhere by the time we moved in. I blame the house’s former owner, who decided to ignore a problem instead of tending to it. Everything I read on subject says HERBICIDE, HERBICIDE, HERBICIDE, CROSS YOUR FINGERS, AND PRAY TO WHATEVER GOD YOU WORSHIP. It sounds like a hit-or-miss strategy that also happens to be the only strategy out there.
Gah.
May 26th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
We’ve had similar problems with plants that just won’t go away.
We have a vine that like to attract Japanese beetles (which are not the friendliest buggers to begin with) and is slowly trying to choke a very large azalea. And it’s EVERYWHERE. I cut it back, and it comes back. I dig it up, and it comes back. I dig other places, there it is. STill haven’t gotten rid of it.
In a similar vein, we had a catawpa tree growing by the back door. It was cutting into the foundation, so it needed to go. We cut it back, and I used half a bottle of Roundup on it. It’s dead, FINALLY — now we just need to dig up the roots.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
My ex MIL was horrified when we planted a wisteria. She told us it would eat the yard and tear up the foundation. We laughed her off…haaahahahohshit! Half of the yard work every year was tracking down the next shoot and hacking it away. We hated chemicals but finally had to resort to Roundup. I don’t know what the half life of that stuff is but when I moved, the ground was still dead there…
May 27th, 2008 at 8:01 am
So it really is all about the digging and the Roundup and the praying, huh? Damn…it would be helpful if the stupid thing in my yard didn’t look so much like some of the plants that are supposed to be there!
May 27th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
But what plant is is exactly? There are plenty of low maintainence plants in the world (like Impatiens - gack) but sometimes the showy ones are worth the work.
May 27th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
I have no idea at all, Phyllis. I never flowered or changed color or anything interesting like that — it’s pretty much a brown woody stem with leaves shaped like a leave a toddler would draw. Very dull indeed.
May 28th, 2008 at 7:37 am
Good luck with it. We had to remove a tree from our backyard that was threatening to take over the neighborhood (literally- it dropped leaves into three others yards). It took a call to an arborist, who then had to return two years later when we discovered that the massive network of roots was even more ginormous than we had originally thought.
Nightmare. Happily, it’s over now.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Have you tried depriving it all of sunlight- if you were prepared to go there and just completly denude the area for a while you could lay down sheets of weed mat on top. I have used this method to get rid of nastyweeds without chemicals - be very careful with Roundup - I have killed other plants when it has rained soon after application. Happy gardening!