Wednesday-Saturday, July 19-22, 2023

Interested in propagating and preserving native southeastern plant species in the landscape? The annual Cullowhee Native Plant Conference is THE place to be! Both professionals and laypersons stand to gain valuable knowledge from the plethora of field trips, lectures, and workshops on offer.

Held at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina, located between the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge mountains, approximately fifty miles west of Asheville, the conference is close to both the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In addition to the chock-full program schedule, informal sessions allow participants to exchange ideas, and attendees are encouraged to bring materials they wish to share.

Registration is now open. While a number of the field trips are already full, there are still more than enough workshops and talks to make the trip well worth your while!

The SCNPS has retained the services of the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) to challenge the Spartanburg County Planning Commission’s conditional approval of an RV park on Goldmine Creek, a high-quality, ecologically sensitive Piedmont headwaters stream which, together with the surrounding forest, is home to a rare and threatened (in more ways than one) species, the Dwarf-Flowered Heartleaf. The appeal asks the Court of Common Pleas to reverse the Commission’s decision and to vacate the conditional approval of the site plan. Several homeowners associations and nearby landowners have also appealed the conditional approval of the site plan. The Circuit Court will decide both appeals.

The approved “park” (we use that word lightly) would include 86 parking spaces, 49 “campsites,” a stormwater detention pond, and (wait for it) a septic field. Despite the fact that the County’s own Unified Land Management Ordinance requires that RV park developments “protect ecologically sensitive areas” and “preserve natural features and landscape,” the developer’s site plan takes into account neither the presence of the rare plant nor the existence of ecologically sensitive areas, including important water resources and rich forest habitats. The kicker? The areas around this proposed RV park in Campobello are already protected by conservation easements. (Maybe it’s just us, but the phrase “No RV Park is an island” comes to mind.)

“This beautiful forest, clean stream, and very rare plant are important parts of Spartanburg County’s natural heritage,” said Frank Holleman, SELC senior attorney. “The County’s Ordinance requires that specific steps be taken to protect this important area, but the site plan approved by the Planning Commission would do real harm to this special place.”

In South Carolina, the Dwarf Flowered Heartleaf exists only in a limited band of the upper Piedmont in Spartanburg, Cherokee, and Greenville Counties in rich, damp forests. The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources considers it a “Highest Priority Species” in the South Carolina Wildlife Action Plan, and it has been listed as threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act since 1989. In Spartanburg County, the Department of Natural Resources established the Peters Creek Heritage Preserve to protect one of the areas where this plant is found.

“You can’t find this plant anywhere else in the world, and this development is not designed to protect this special plant and its habitat,” said Kathryn Ellis, president of South Carolina Native Plant Society. “We work to protect South Carolina’s natural heritage, including its important plants, and this site plan threatens these values that we all hold dear.”

The appeal filed yesterday asks the Court of Common Pleas to reverse the Planning Commission’s decision and to vacate the conditional approval of the site plan for the RV Park.

In addition to SELC’s appeal, homeowner associations and nearby landowners have also appealed the conditional approval of the site plan. The Circuit Court will decide both appeals.

The Plant List has Arrived!

• Plants are organized by type, then alphabetically by Latinate name. You can search for keywords by pressing CMD-F (Mac) or CTRL-F (PC).
• Members & Volunteers: We will be posting the pre-sale online order form on the evening of Friday, April 7. PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL ORDERS — WE WILL ONLY BE ACCEPTING ORDERS SENT VIA THE ONLINE PORTAL, which we will link to from this page on Friday!
  

So: Get out your pencil and drool over the list below to your heart’s content. All plants have limited quantities (some more than others), so make sure to formulate your sale-day plan accordingly. (And, remember to bring your own wagon — we won’t have any to loan out this year.)

Cash, credit cards, and checks accepted. A 3% surcharge will apply for credit card orders to cover our processing fees. (Sorry! But, you know: non-profit, and all that!)

Full details about the sale and links to our FAQ pages can be found HERE.
Download a printable copy of the plant list in PDF form, HERE.
Download a copy of the plant list in Excel form, HERE.

Once the Pre-Sale has concluded, we will update this list with locations keyed to the Conestee sale map.

by Special Contributor Matthew Thomas

Quick: What first comes to mind when I say “English Ivy”? 

For some folks it’s the Groves of Academe, like Harvard Yard or “The Quad” at Yale, storied ivy-covered walls brimming over with history, erudition, and romance. 

But if you’re like me (and I know you are), you envision an old-growth hardwood forest overrun, a neighbor’s lawn smothered, and too-many-to-name native species choked to death by the menacing, all-encompassing vine.

Among my favorite gardening activities, I rank removing invasives as second-only to planting natives. Unfortunately, these days I have far more of the former than the latter to keep me busy. And English Ivy (Hedera helix) has become my personal favorite plant to hate. (Which, considering Kudzu and Thorny Olive — on which, more later— is saying quite a lot!)

Introduced to the Colonies around 1727, the “rapid-growing” and “low-maintenance” (read “aggressive”) English Ivy was advertised as the perfect ground cover. And, if by “perfect” one means, “smothers everything in its path,” the vine certainly knows few equals. 

These days, it seems like it’s growing just about everywhere you look. I’ve seen it climbing solitary trees in the middle of fields, growing in the wild places where I explore and hike, and of course overtaking vacant properties, small and large alike. 

It’s a hardy plant, capable of surviving and thriving just about anywhere, from the mountains to the Sandhills to the Coastal Plains. It can not only withstand cold temperatures, it has even been known, if conditions are right, to continue to grow (albeit at a slower rate) during the coldest months, climbing bare and dormant deciduous trees, and killing them by Springtime.

As it establishes itself onto a woody plant, it traps moisture and inhibits the host’s ability to photosynthesize, causing a variety of issues including leaf spots, sooty mold, bacterial leaf spot, Anthracnose fungus, and root and stem rot. The beleaguered and weakened host plant is susceptible not only to death, but also to felling, due to the massive added weight of the vine itself.

It’s not just on the ground or scaling trees where Hedera helix wreaks its havoc. As it wends its way over buildings and other structures, it traps moisture against walls and roofs, and works its tough roots into bricks and mortar, causing a myriad of structural problems as well as permanent damage to painted surfaces, stucco, and even vinyl.

We’ve all seen it: English Ivy, like its insidious cousin, Kudzu, can smother entire properties, creating a monoculture that covers, and sometimes destroys, every plant and structure in its path. 

All-in-all, it’s one very tough, insidious, and ubiquitous plant, and one that, once established, can be quite a challenge to eradicate.

While acknowledging that herbicides are a less-than-perfect solution, I’ve found that foliar spraying with Roundup when new growth emerges during the Spring months to be very effective. I follow up with smaller treatments to make sure I get any plants that were missed. Using this method, I can usually get rid of it completely in 2-3 growing seasons. 

That said, the incredibly knowledgeable folks at the South Carolina Native Plant Group Facebook group have generously shared with me some marvelous and ingenious suggestions for non-poisonous methods for dealing with the vine, including solarization, base cutting, smothering, and — if you happen to have one handy — a herd of goats! (I doff my cap to the group, and thank them for their generous responses!)

In the wild, I also pull up seedlings whenever I find them growing, and I cut and then paint vines that I find climbing trees. I’ve heard that foliar spraying on cold winter days can be effective but I’ve yet to try this method. I do recommend adding a surfactant to any herbicide when applying it to English Ivy.

The pictures I’ve selected to illustrate this article show just how invasive the vine can be. In several you will see trees that have substantially weakened; in others you’ll see some that have been smothered to death. 

And, if you look closely, you will also notice another species on my most-wanted list, Elaeagnus pungens, aka Thorny Olive. (Keep an eye out for my next article featuring this insidious invasive!) Elaeagnus pungens is often found growing together with Hedura helix, along with several other well-known aggressive, invasive species. 

Given the destruction these two plants can (and do) cause, you would think that the SCDNR would have made selling them illegal in our state. But, sadly, both Hedura helix and Elaeagnus pungens are still legally grown and widely sold by local nurseries and big-box stores to this day.

To read more about these and other insidious species, refer to previous SCNPS articles on invasive groundcovers and their native alternatives and native groundcovers for shade gardens.

From the field,

Matthew Thomas

Special Contributor