On August 4, 7 members of East Cobb Branch of AYLUS went to Brownwood Park at east side of Atlanta, we participated THREE hours work to clear out the invasive trees. We worked with other volunteers to get rid of an entire patch (about the size of half baseball field) of alias species, it will help to keep local trees growing healthy with diversified species.
We got a basic training by event coordinator at first. There were four major invasive species populating the park: Cherry Laurel, a spiky-leaved plant (that I forgot the name of), Silver Thorn, and non-native Honey Suckle. The coordinator taught us how to tell the difference between the invasive plants and the normal plants. Cherry Laurels smelled like cherry coke when its leaves were crushed up while the native plant that looked like a Cherry Laurel, Black Cherry, smelled like grass. For the spiky-leaved plant, no other plant had leaves like those. Therefore, determining if it was the invasive plant or not was easy. The Silver Thorn was easy to spot because its leaves had a white/silver color on its underside while the stem had long prickly thorns to them whereas the invasive Honey Suckles would grow in tall islands and droop outwards.
After the coordinator taught us how to identify the invasive plant species, she passed out tools, including gloves, pruners, and saws. The pruners came in handy, especially when the volunteers were dealing with the spiky invasive species. With the pruners, they first snipped off all the prickly leaves and branches before sawing the plant at the base, eventually calling a coordinator over to spray the root with herbicide. We had to pull out these trees as they would outcompete the local native plants and eventually starve them of vital nutrients and water. Our job was to pull out the trees or cut them to a low enough level to allow herbicide to reach the base and kill the roots. The chemical was the final blow to ensure that the invasive plant would not grow out again.
We split our members into two groups and went with a flow, things we worked on included: pruning the branches, pulling up plants by the roots, moving the dead invasive species out of the work area, and cutting the plants into multiple segments to move them easily. Cutting the plants was the hardest out of all of them. First of all, the saw was hard to obtain because it was in high demand. Also, when we were working on it, some people were just sliding the saw back and forth, as fast as possible. Their effort was futile because the razor was barely cutting into the branch for each slide. Therefore, a special technique was needed to save both time and energy. As one of the adults showed us, we had to give the saw pressure with each push and pull. This will make the cutting deeper and faster. Soon, all of us were using this tactic, making our cutting swifter and easier.
Learning how to effectively saw a branch was challenging, but the greatest challenge of all was uprooting an entire invasive tree with root wrench. To begin with, we did a waist cut, making most of the tree topple down with all its branches and leaves. Afterward, we helped saw the fallen part into multiple segments while the other Trees Atlanta coordinator, the burly one, with the help of several volunteers, started wiggling the base, to and fro, loosing up the dirt around the base and cutting off big roots, ……, after 3 or 4 rounds with many people’s effort, we successfully completely uprooted the huge invasive root.
At the end of the session, when all the work was done, the helpers stood back to admire the huge clearing they had created by moving all the invasive species out. That day, all the volunteers learned a valuable lesson: Only with effort can any goal be reached, and only when the goal is reached, will there be a taste of success.
Attendance: Howard Hua, Selina Huang, Susanna Huang, Maxwell Jiang, Alex Lunn, Katherine Sha, Nick Vincent
Reported By: Susanna Huang
