Ficaria verna Archives | South Carolina Native Plant Society

Upstate Meeting via Zoom June 16

The Upstate Chapter program on June 16 at 7pm will be online via Zoom. Bill Stringer offers a presentation on Fig Buttercup (Ficaria verna), a highly invasive plant that has been found in the Greenville and Rock Hill areas. Dan Whitten will co-host with Bill. Enjoy the meeting from the comfort of your own home!

Preparation for the Zoom Meeting

To prepare for the meeting, download the Zoom application to your computer, laptop, or smartphone. Please use only Zoom.us as your source to download. We suggest you download the app well ahead so you won’t be scrambling at the last minute. Mark the date on your calendar and plan to join in the live Zoom meeting.

How to Join the Meeting

The exact information on how to join the meeting will be sent out in a Tiny Letter on Monday, June 16. No clue what a Tiny Letter is?? Go to the website at www.scnps.org. On the home page, on the far right side see the “Receive Our E-mail Updates”. Enter your email address in the box. You will begin to receive the updates, which are called Tiny Letters. They may go to your spam, so be sure to check there. Tiny Letters arrive from all the five state chapters about their upcoming events, cancellations, plant rescues, etc. They keep you up to date on the latest news.

If you have not tried out Zoom before, embrace a new experience! Join in to find out how the Upstate Chapter of SCNPS and local partners have been battling Fig Buttercup, a menace to our streams, rivers, and wetlands.

The Battle Continues

Spring is here! and Fig Buttercup is back. Actually it never left; it was just hiding.

Greenville’s original infestation was discovered in Reedy River floodplain in Lake Conestee Nature Park in 2013. Since then, three source populations have been identified, each on tributary creeks, each about five miles upstream.

Fig Buttercup (Ficaria verna) is not “just another invasive plant”. It is so aggressively invasive – and has such a limited period of vulnerability – that it has actually been outlawed in numerous states, including South Carolina.

The Clemson University Dept of Plant Industry continues to reach out to people throughout the state requesting that they recognize and report it. Fig Buttercup is blooming now, and its bright yellow flowers make it easy to spot.

Now is also the optimum time to treat it. This year a varied coalition of agencies and organizations, led by SCNPS, has joined forces to fund a massive effort toward controlling Fig Buttercup in Greenville’s Reedy River corridor.

These sponsors include the South Carolina Exotic Pest Plant Council, Greenville County Soil & Water Conservation District, ReWa, Greater Greenville Master Gardeners Association, and Friends of the Reedy River.

Moist soils along waterways support diverse native plant communities, which in turn support native songbirds, butterflies and other pollinator wildlife species. Invasion of these areas by Fig Buttercup rapidly converts them into monocultures that suppress native plants and wildlife.

Fig Buttercup threatens to blanket moist sites and streamside land throughout the Southeast. Its early emergence, dense growth, and floating propagules, combined with our common high-rainfall events, facilitate its ability to colonize new territory downstream — as illustrated in the sequence of pictures that accompany this article.

Invasive Plant Control, Inc, a nationally recognized invasive plant control firm out of Nashville (www.invasiveplantcontrol.com), has been contracted to treat Fig Buttercup along Greenville’s centerpiece Reedy River and its tributaries, including Lake Conestee Nature Park. Several years of treatment will be necessary.

Learn more at https://scnps.org/citizen-science-invasive-fig-buttercup

If you suspect that you have or have found
Fig Buttercup, please contact
the Clemson University Department of Plant Industry
at 864.646.2140 or www.clemson.edu/regulatory/contact/
or contact your local Clemson University Extension Service office.

In addition, please email FigButtercup@scnps.org

National Invasive Species Awareness Week — and how you can help

A new invasive plant species that appears to be poised to be a terrible invasive in moist, nutrient-rich situations across eastern North America has been documented in two counties in South Carolina: fig buttercup, also called lesser celandine (Ficaria verna, formerly Ranunculus ficaria).

Because of concern that this plant may be establishing footholds along waterways in other counties, the SC Native Plant Society is enlisting the efforts of people across the state to scout areas near them during March and April. A training video can be seen at
https://scnps.org/education/citizen-science-invasive-fig-buttercup/

A workshop is also planned, to be held March 21 at Lake Conestee Nature Park in Greenville:
https://scnps.org/event/upstate-lake-conestee-nature-park-invasive-fig-buttercup

What is an invasive species? An invasive species is an introduced plant or animal with the ability to thrive and spread aggressively outside its native range, and which is believed to cause damage to the environment, human economy and/or human health.

In an effort to to raise awareness and identify solutions to invasive species issues, the week of February 22–28 has been designated as National Invasive Species Awareness Week.

Kudzu (Pueraria montana), “the plant that ate the South”, is an example that readily comes to mind. Introduced to the United States as an ornamental and heavily promoted for erosion control, it now covers about 8 million acres of land in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, and costs an estimated $500 million a year in the U.S. in control efforts and the damage it causes to forest productivity.

Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (Adelges tsugae) is an invasive insect introduced to the East Coast in the 1950s, Already it has killed huge numbers of hemlocks in the Southern Appalachians, and foresters as far north as Maine are now battling the destructive pest. The hemlock is a foundational species in the riparian and cove habitats of southern mountains, and the ecological ramifications of its loss impact such things as stream flow, water temperature, and the survival of eastern brook trout.

Hydrilla (Hydrilla verticillata) is an invasive aquatic plant that was first found in Lake Marion in 1982 and now covers over 55,000 acres in the state. Indeed, Hydrilla has become a major obstacle to fishing, swimming, boating, hydroelectric generation, and irrigation in slow-moving waters from Connecticut to Texas.

A list of ways to observe National Invasive Species Awareness Week can be downloaded from the official website (www.nisaw.org). Their suggestions include “clean, drain and dry your boat trailer and gear every time you leave a body of water”, “learn to recognize common invaders and keep an eye out for signs of new ones”, “join an eradication effort”, “let your lawmakers know your opinions about the impact of invasive species on our natural heritage”, “replace your invasive landscape plants with native alternatives”, and “become a citizen scientist”.