The Woods

A ‘wall of green’ was how my husband described our woods when we first moved to our Central Minnesota home six years ago.  We could see the tops of impressive oak trees and spindly cedars, but the first 10-20 feet was a thick, impenetrable wall of green vegetation.  It was armed with thorns that easily scratched our arms to bleeding if we tried to push through the denseness.  The wall had blue-black berries in the fall that stained anything they touched.

I don’t think we found out until the next summer that our ‘wall of green’ was buckthorn–and from then on, it became a bad word in our household–a word said with scorn.  And it became my husband’s new hobby.  Common and glossy buckthorn are on the Minnesota DNR’s list of restricted noxious plants–it’s illegal to import, sell or transport it in Minnesota.  And we had a whole woods full of it.

This shrub or small tree was imported from Europe in the mid-1800s and used as a fast-growing hedge until the 1930s when it was found to be so invasive.  It’s an understory tree that takes over the floor of the woods.  It has a relatively shallow root system that creates a mat that doesn’t allow native understory plants to grow–buckthorn hogs the sunlight, the nutrients, and the moisture.  It’s also a prolific seeder and is spread around by birds eating the berries and excreting the seeds.  Our woods had the old, mature oaks and cedars, a few hardy honeysuckles, and the buckthorn.  The ground beneath them was eerie-looking and barren of other vegetation.

So Chris began the war on buckthorn.  He purchased a handy-dandy buckthorn puller for the ones with 2″ or smaller diameter trunks.  The larger ones were sawn down with a bow saw or chain saw, and the stumps or staubs, as Chris calls them, were painted with full strength Round-up.  The tangly, pokey branches had to be hauled off to a composter–pick-up load after pick-up load.  We are five years in, and the battles still rage.  The seedlings have to be pulled for a number of years after cutting the mature buckthorn.  They grow fast and thick.  We still have large patches that we haven’t tackled yet–and that says nothing of all that is on neighboring properties.

But there have been many victories.  We have removed close to 80% of the mature buckthorn in our woods.  We can see the dark, shapely trunks and branches of the Oak trees.  Oak seedlings are popping up all over.  Ferns are spreading their airy fronds along the understory.  Solomon’s seal is populating great sweeps with their nodding flowers.

Gooseberry shrubs are growing.  Spiderwort is a bright blue star shining in the green.

Wild strawberries carpet the ground, producing their tiny red fruit.

The greatest woodland treasure that has returned is the Jack in the Pulpit.  As we cleared the buckthorn back, one appeared close to the yard under a honeysuckle shrub.

Last year, in a newly cleared area, a huge Jack in the Pulpit sprang up.  It was like it had been waiting a long time to come back to the woods after being suffocated under the roots of the buckthorn–and it came back strong and robust!  With hard work we cleared the buckthorn, and with hard work we continue to improve the woods by pulling the buckthorn seedlings and other undesirables that sprout up each year.  The woods are coming alive again, and it is beautiful and inspiring!

We may all have a ‘buckthorn’ in our lives–something that looks good or works well to begin with, but slowly invades our life and starts choking out the good stuff of who we really are.  It may be a way of thinking we developed in our childhood that no longer serves us well or an addiction that is running our life.  We need to recognize what it is and work hard to tear down the wall, so the treasures of our life and soul can grow and flourish.