We went to the Planting Fields Arboretum to clean up some invasive species that are taking up valuable space in a valley that could be used for nature preservation.
The Arboretum is a garden solely devoted to trees. A lot of the invasive species we cleaned up tended to smother or outcompete the trees and thus pose a threat to them. In addition to damaging the trees, they also prevent animals that live on or around trees from having a comfortable or safe place to nest.
Some of the invasive species that we removed include the common grape vine and the Oriental bitter-sweet, which succeeds in choking trees of sunlight and nutrients. Another species was the Devil’s walking stick, a woody plant that is adorned with sharp spikes that provide a safety concern to guests visiting the park. The last few were small shrubs/ grasses such as wineberry, mugwort, and raspberry plants which outcompeted plants on the ground level.
We split up to 3 groups, each to tackle a group of invasive species. The first groups were in charge of handling the wineberry, mugwort, raspberry and privets by first removing the wineberry and raspberry to give us space to deal with the privets properly. The mugworts are to be dealt with chemicals from the park. A second group was dispatched to a hill infested with Devil’s Walking Stick. We first cut all the devil’s walking sticks to about 4–3 inches above the ground. We did this because if we cut it too close, the park would be able to effectively remove them using pesticides. Last but not least we have the third group, which was responsible for taking out the vines such as the oriental bittersweet and the grapevine. Their job was to just remove the vines entangled in the trees. We even had two of the younger kids run around and collect litter that managed to accumulate in the valley. We did a fantastic job at getting rid of the invasive species. The rest will be dealt with chemicals and heavy machinery we can’t use.
Hours:
Kevin Zhang (2.5hr), Xingzhi Li(2.5hr), Adena yang(2.5hr), Zoe Xia(2.5hr), Yingxiang(Xavier) Liu (2.5hr), Felicia Liu (2.5hr), Yuya Liu (2.5hr), Andrew Qian (2.5hr), Brandon Li(2.5hr), Ankie Huang (2.5hr), Ang Chen(2.5hr), Taisheng Wu(2.5hr)
