Well, as someone (there’s a debate about whom, but see this wikipedia page) once said, “No plan long survives the first encounter with the enemy.” Here’s how our first day went fighting mile-a-minute vine on Block Island.

Hope Leeson and I arrived on the ferry at 10 am. Thank you Scott Comings and The Nature Conservancy for providing ferry passage. We were met by TNC staff and taken to the site. We quickly located the patch, in the Fresh Swamp Preserve about 30 meters east of Lakeside Drive. We discovered the patch to be much larger and more advanced than I (at least) had been expecting. It extended north from the Preserve path 10-15 meters to a dirt road/driveway (that connects Lakeside Drive with Payne Road) and about 40 meters east to west. The coordinates of the center of the patch are N 41*09.706′ x W 071*34.577′.

Coverage for much of the area was approximately 90%. There were isolated plants and patches on the north side of the driveway as well, the most westerly being almost to Lakeside Drive and the most easterly being opposite the main patch, but on the other side of the road. There were two isolated, somewhat smaller patches on the path about 150 meters east of the main patch (Patch 1)–we called these Patch 2 and Patch 3. They were roughly 8 to 10 meters diameter each, with some stragglers more outlying.

We were joined by four volunteers, including naturalist, RINHS member, and New Shoreham First Warden Kim Gaffett. We took samples of the mile-a-minute vine as directed by Judith Hough-Goldstein. We collected 250 berries, including 150 from the first patch and 50 each from the patches east down the path. We also collected 8 samples of five leaves each from patch 1 and one sample of 5 leaves from each of patches 2 and 3. We also took video and still pictures of the extent of the patch, the pulling process, and other features we thought noteworthy. Hope looked for plants of interest in the understory but found nothing unusual. The scaffold plants consist of about 60% blackberry, 10% elderberry, and about equal proportions of bayberry, multiflora rose, bittersweet, and goldenrod making up the balance.

The mile-a-minute vine had completely covered all other plants except the odd blackberry cane that managed to stick out the top, including climbing over a 15′ high bayberry tree. In some places it was clear the vines were rooted around the perimeter of a shrub patch and had scambled up and over, but in others it was clear they were coming up densely from directly under their scaffold plants. In many places the rooted stems were at least 20 per square meter. Some individual vines were 20 feet long.

The pulling was relatively easy given the circumstances. In many cases it was possible to gather a bunch of stems low down at the edge of a bush and by twisting and pulling, create a hauser of vines that was strong enough to pull down a whole mat from off of a bush. These could be rolled up into a bundle for easy handling and to help prevent berries from dropping off. The thorns of the mile-a-minute vine were wicked if you had exposed skin but, as they are thin, short, and curved, almost any layer of cloth protected you well against them. The hardest part of pulling was dealing with thorns of the blackberry and multiflora rose. They made it hard to get into the bushes and easily pierced gloves, jackets, and even boots. The height of the MaM in the trees as also difficult to deal with. If a vine broke while you were pulling it, which was most of the time, you often couldn’t reach the (heavily fruited) rest of it up in the trees. I think we could have used a long-handled, metal garden rake to reach up and pull it down.

About the berries: the vines had numerous clusters of ripe berries and three or four times as many immature clusters. The berries come off very easily and the pulling released showers of berries onto the ground. Because of the easy with which these berries come off and bounce and roll around, I would recommend against trying to dispose of this material off-site. We initially bagged 9 bags of vines in plastic trash bags but soon abandoned that when it was clear the bags were full of rips from the thorns and there was a great risk of leaving a trail of seeds. After that we piled the vines into a great heap on top of an area already sprouting many many stems. This should keep the birds from getting most of the berries and as this ground will already have to be controlled next year, adding a few more shouldn’t matter. The pile we ended up with is 4 feet high, 4 feet wide, and 6 feet long and so solidly packed you could climb onto it.

Three of us worked until about 2:30 and Hope and I caught the 3 pm boat thanks to Kim and her car. The total person hours on site were 20. We pulled all the vines we could reach between the path and the dirt road, including all the vines at the two isolated patches down the path to the east. We left clumps of vines and berries that we couldn’t reach in the tops of a bush and a tree. There is a huge pile of vines about 10 feet south of the dirt road and there are nine bags stacked at the turnstile, but I’m having misgivings about moving the bags even that far as I’m afraid they’ll be dropping berries everywhere. If they haven’t been moved yet, I think they should left at the main infestation in a pile to solarize and compost on-site.

Given the size and density of the outbreak and the number of ripe seeds released by the pull, we can expect this area to be heavily infested with mile-a-minute next year. Given the absence of significant plants in the understory, I think TNC should consider using a brush-hog on the entire area between the path and the road and keeping it mown for several years until the seed stock of MaM is exhausted. TNC will also have to negotiate access to the land on the other side of the dirt road because there are significant patches there already and by next year there will be much larger ones.

Speaking of close by, when I got back into the office I found an email from Kim Gaffett. Apparently when she returned home yesterday she had a message from someone who’d been talking to one of the pullers. She said something like, “oh, I’ve got that growing at my house!” She lives on Lakeside Drive south of Fresh Pond, about a quarter mile from the other infestation. Kim sent me pictures of this new patch, which looks fairly large. The home owner pulled it all up that afternoon. So at this point, it is clear that MaM has been on Block Island for some years and has spread at least a bit in the Fresh Pond/south-center of the island area. After TNC has had some time to assess the spread of this plant on the island and the availability of resources required if a manual control effort is to be effective, they might want to talk to Judy Hough-Goldstein and Dick Casagrande about the possibility of a biocontrol. Judy is working on a weevil that has already been undergoing field tests in Pennsylvania. For information on this, see her website. Of course biocontrol with a beetle needs to be approached with caution as Block Island is the only R.I. site for important coleopterous rare species such as the federally listed Nicrophorus americanus.

Kim and I and others will keep working into the fall to try to spread word of this plant on Block Island and get a better idea of just how widespread it really is.

That’s the report.
David Gregg

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