Native Plant Restoration Team

Sunday, September 14 at 9:30 am, restoration crew at Huckleberry Regional Preserve. Join the ongoing weed rip at Huckleberry Regional Preserve to stop and perhaps reverse the spread of forget-me-nots, Vinca, French broom and cape ivy. We meet in the parking lot, and you may choose to work nearby or with a group that works on the trails further into the preserve. Bring water, gloves, and your favorite clippers or ripping tool, although we will have several to lend.

Directions: From either north or south of Oakland, take Highway 13 and exit at Moraga/Thornhill Avenue, Follow Moraga Avenue straight from the traffic light at the exit ramp as it parallels 13 and changes its name to Mountain Boulevard. Turn left onto Snake at the traffic light for Snake/Mountain Boulevard. Go uphill on Snake, but be prepared to make a hard left turn to follow Snake several blocks uphill at its intersection with Shepherd Canyon. (If you see a soccer field on your right, then you missed the turn--go back.) Follow Snake through residential Montclair to the intersection with Skyline Blvd. Turn left onto Skyline and follow it several blocks to the Huckleberry parking lot. From south of Oakland, exit 13 at Park, turn left on Mountain, right on Snake, and then same directions apply.

Contact: Janet Gawthrop

Join the battle against stinkweed


Volunteers bag stinkweed collected from a roadside.
Bagging is necessary to prevent the seeds from dispersing..

Stinkweed (Dittrichia graveolens) was first detected in 1995 in southern Alameda County and is spreading like wildfire throughout the Bay Area.

A Mediterranean native, stinkweed is unpalatable to livestock, is toxic to sheep, and can cause a skin reaction in people. It mainly grows in disturbed areas but can form dense stands in swales and invade riparian habitats. The California Invasive Plant Council classifies it as “red alert—highly invasive”.

Stinkweed is a late-developing member of the Asteraceae. It is prolific: a single plant can produce 15,000 seeds. Its tiny, pappus-topped seeds can float for hundreds of feet and also can become attached to hair, feathers, clothing, and vehicles.

Stinkweed looks like just another roadside weed. From a distance it looks a little like Russian thistle, a little like horseweed, a little like the buzzed-off coyote bush one sees on maintained rights of way. Up close, it has small yellow flowers, and its resin smells like cough medicine.

On October 11, 2007, I first noticed stinkweed on a stretch of Highway 24 that I travel almost every day. I soon realized substantial colonies were growing on both sides of the Caldecott Tunnel all along Highway 24, and southward along Highway 680, as well as along Highway 880 and on the Peninsula. I have seen only a few skeletons from last year’s plants; those few are the source for this year’s massive growth. Imagine what next year will look like.

Are we too late to take action? Some weed managers think so. Yet some are fighting it, with herbicide and clipping early on, and hand-removal after seed set begins. I’ve seen so many exotic weeds assault our California landscapes. If there is a chance of limiting the spread of this plant, I’d rather try than just stand by.

I asked friends and known weed warriors to join me in limiting the spread of stinkweed along the highways, corridors for dispersal. CalTrans provided volunteer forms, vests, gloves, hard hats—and hundreds of enormous plastic bags, because seed set is well underway.

In six work days, a total of 52 person-hours, these weed warriors have removed a ton and a half of stinkweed along Highway 24, from Highway 13 (west of the Caldecott Tunnel) to the Orinda exit east of the tunnel. (Avril Tolley, Sally and Elsa de Becker, Jim Luini, Maya Rappaport, Wendy Tokuda, Janet Gawthrop, Elaine Jackson, Laura Baker and Phil Leitner—you are awesome!) And hats off to Robert Songey, Walnut Creek CalTrans Maintenance Manager, who dispatched crews to remove large masses where road resurfacing is taking place.

In just the past few days, I’ve noticed stinkweed on surface roads in my town. Yesterday, I patrolled Lamorinda roads and returned with bags containing 80 lbs of stinkweed. There’s more out there.

Want to help? Removal has ended for 2007 but will start again in 2008. Please join us then! We will report in the Bay Leaf when projects are scheduled. Then we will work most Saturday and Sunday mornings, as we did this year.

Even if you don’t have time to work, plan to stop by a work party and get acquainted with stinkweed so you can remove it from your own community. Barbara Leitner (bleitner@pacbell.net) and Restoration Chair Mike Perlmutter (mperlmutter@audubon.org) are the members most involved in the project.

For images of dittrichia, go to
http://www.cal-ipc.org/ip/management/alerts/pdf/2004RedAlerts.pdf.