Yesterday, John Dixon instigated the removal of traveler's joy on a pine John planted in the arboretum.
What happened was that last month, I got John to give a tour of the arboretum to my fellow team members in the project sponsored by the Washington Native Plant Society. He noticed that traveler's joy was growing on the eastern white pine (
Pinus strobus "Winter Gold"). John decided this had to be tackled. By the time he had dug out the roots earlier this week, the plant had already flowered in the tree and was starting to go to seed. So, he enlisted my help and Jim's in an effort to contain the flowering plant and seeds.
King County has a pretty good
website on clematis vitalba. John's primary aim in getting rid of the plant off the pine was to stop, to the extent possible, the seeds from getting dispersed by the wind. Here are the photos I took:
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| The first tactic was to try to yank the vines off the tree from the ground. Note the knotweed behind the guys. Said John: "Don't get distracted." |
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| Next tactic: John climbed into the tree and then tried yanking on the vines. |
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| Here's an image of the flowers and a bit of the younger vines, which eventually become quite woody. |
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| Jim managed to climb higher into the pine. |
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| John with a load of clematis vines, leaves and flowers. My job was to get all this off site. |
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| Hard to see, but there is a pole in this photo, parallel to the second large branch from the top. Jim had taped a gardening fork on the end of it and he was grabbing the vines and twisting the vines around the fork like spaghetti. He would then drop bundles of the stuff to the ground. |
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| The end. |
In a little over three hours, most of the clematis was off the pine. I would estimate Jim got 95% or more, with a few young vines still visible from the ground at the end. Of course, some of the seeds were raining down as the guys tried to get it off the pine and some of that will surely germinate so John said the matter needs to be monitored. I will also return to dig out the the small patches of knotweed in this area. John pulled out one at the end to show me what the root looks like. They are not particularly deep in the ground.
