Invasives Part 3: How to tackle those colorful invasive shrubs that still need to go

By Will Danforth
©2025 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Ffor the last in our three-part series on invasives, let’s focus on specific shrubs that turn color after our native trees and shrubs, making them easy to find. For more photos of invasives, click the Vermont invasives website.

So let’s take care of our home turf!

Plants pull energy into their roots in fall to prepare for winter, so cutting and dabbing is most effective then. See Part 2 on cutting and dabbing by clicking here. However, learning to recognize their leaves means you can find them before they seed in late summer. Birds spread the seeds and they can remain viable in soil for years, so you’ll need to recheck sites.

Should the branches you cut have seeds, you’ll need to burn or “solarize” them (put in a black plastic bag in the sun for several weeks, preferably on a hot driveway). Also many aliens are allelopathic: Their roots exude a chemical to inhibit the growth of other plants, enabling them to completely take over an area.

First up: burning bush (euonymus alata), a landscaping favorite for its brilliant red fall foliage, but it can escape and create a monoculture. Cambridgeport is a case study: it’s everywhere (look north). Pull it if you can, use a weed wrench if you’re strong and have time, otherwise cut and dab. Red chokeberry (aronia arbutifolia) or fothergilla are fine replacements.

Honeysuckle (lonicera sp.) – yellow fall foliage. There are several natives and several aliens, and you’re most likely to find the latter. They are surprisingly easy to pull out. Try from all four directions; one will get it started, then continue from other directions. Hang or sit upside down so the roots don’t touch the soil. Cut and dab large ones.

Buckthorn – two invasive species: rhamnus cathartica and frangula alnus, but mostly you’ll find the latter, the glossy buckthorn. It’s greenish-yellow in fall and it’s also surprisingly easy to pull out. It’s easy to confuse with chokecherry (prunus virginiana), a great native shrub with tiny serrations on the leaf edge, whereas buckthorn is smooth.

Japanese Barberry (berberis thunbegii), another landscape favorite, is orange, red or purple in fall. Yes it’s got barbs, so wear gloves. Pull the smaller ones; for large ones, a hedgetrimmer will allow you to cut branches first to get close enough to cut and dab. Barberry can alter the pH and chemistry of the soil, plus mice and ticks seem to like it, so eradicating it helps in more ways than one.

Multiflora rose (rose multiflora) also has thorns, more dangerous than the barberry’s, since they can infect your skin with a fungus, sporotrichosis, also called “rose picker’s disease.” Always wear long sleeves and gloves, and use a hedge trimmer. It grows fast, with long arching canes that’ll root where they touch the ground, facilitating its spread. With up to a million seeds per plant, you’ll need to check the site multiple times a year.

Asiatic bittersweet (celastrus orbiculatus) is a vigorous vine that climbs and strangles trees. Since tiny root fragments resprout, spray small ones before they climb. Cut and dab older woody climbers to avoid collateral damage. Use triclopyr — glyphosate is often ineffective.

Lastly, Japanese knotweed. I said last week that it needs to be sprayed, ideally by a licensed applicator, because it spreads by underground rhizomes, and small pieces of stem or root can resprout.

You can cut and dab, but with hollow stems, it’s not as effective, and you must burn what you’ve cut. It’s a real problem for road crews, since their excavators and mowing equipment should be cleaned before moving to another area to avoid spreading it.

Small pieces will re-root or float down an adjacent stream and start a new population. It’s time-consuming and expensive, but the so-called “Godzilla plant” allows nothing else to survive; in a few decades, you’ll have nothing but knotweed – no insects, and no birds.

One good thing about going ballistic on invasives – it gets you outside on beautiful fall days. So head out with gloves, loppers and a “buckthorn blaster” and enjoy yourself!

• Part 1 on Monday, Sept. 22: Let’s eliminate non-native invasives to benefit Vermont’s biodiversity.
• Part 2 on Monday, Sept. 29: Non-chemical and chemical methods to get rid of invasive plants.
• Part 3 on Monday, Oct. 22: Tackling those colorful ones that still need to go.

Will Danforth is a board member with the Grafton Nature Museum.