At 11:46 AM -0700 6/1/98, John Shelton - ext. 4051 wrote:

>I can certainly empathize with John's dislike of invasive holly. It is a
>chore to keep the tree under control; however it was there when I bought the
>place and I simply couldn't deprive the robins and cedar wax wings of the
>berries. It's also excellent winter cover for the Chickadees, Juncos and
>Finches. My neighbors are not a concern since their main interest seems to
>be in obtaining the next jug of whiskey or bag of drugs rather than
>landscaping.

Unfortunately, what the neighbors think is of very little concern--it's
what our wildlands think about it. Holly is dreadfully invasive partly
because of those birds which like it so much, and therefore spread the seed
far and wide. It invades forests with ease, displacing the native
understory plants such as salal, sword fern and oregon grape needed to keep
the forests and the wildlife healthy, and it prevents succession because
the shade it produces is so think that not even hemlock will come up
through it. If you lose the forest understory, you'll lose plenty of bird
species too, some of which are a lot more endangered than robins and cedar
waxwings. In Seattle, not even regular backbreaking holly pulls by
volunteers have been able to keep the wilder parks such as Seward free of
it, and farther away there aren't enough stewards to go around to do any
pulling at all. A major source of invasive weed infestation is from
cities: seeds travel on muddy tires and muddy hiking boots as well as by
bird express, so being in the middle of a city does nothing to protect land
100 miles or 500 miles away.

My standard suggestion for people who insist on keeping or planting
invasive exotic plants that are known to cause harm: participate for a few
days in a weed pull for a habitat reconstruction project or stewardship
program. You'll make some good friends, have fun, be incredibly sore the
next day, and almost certainly change your mind! The Native Plant Society
of Oregon <http://www.teleport.com/nonprofit/npso/> is quite active, and
will be happy to tell you of the many understaffed weed-pulling volunteer
opportunities in the Portland area and beyond.

For people in Washington, the Washington Native Plant Society
<http://www.wnps.org/> provides plenty of weed pulling activities, and weed
pulls and native plant salvages are also organized by King County Water and
Land Resources: <http://splash.metrokc.gov/wlr/index.htm>.

As for what to plant to replace a holly: a few possibilites, both evergreen
and deciduous, are black hawthorn, bitter cherry, pacific crabapple,
madrone (if your site is very well drained and sunny),lawson cypress,
engleman spruce, western white pine, pacific dogwood, gary oak (full sun),
shore pine. Many of these support more bird species than holly does
anyway, though not all will tolerate all soils, so you'll have to evaluate
your site. This list doesn't include the huge number of berrying shrubs we
have in the pnw, some of which (beaked hazel, serviceberry, blue elder,...)
can be trained into small trees. A little more information can be found at
<http://www.teleport.com/~allyn/natives/plantlist.html>.

How to kill a holly tree? You'll need bell, book and candle, and probably
a bit of Roundup unless you want to be pulling suckers for the rest of your
life. Limb and cut down the tree (try to cut it in big chunks if you know
a woodworker who may want the stuff; if it's a biggish tree, have it done
professionally--it can be dangerous work), and _immediately_ after making
the final (lowest) trunk cut, paint some concentrated roundup on the cut
where the cambium layer is (the ring underneath the outer bark). It
doesn't take much when applied that way, and with painting you don't risk
spray drift. You'll still get suckers, but not nearly as many as without
the roundup.

Other plants to beware of in the pnw: http://www.wnps.org/eppclist.html

Allyn Weaks
allyn at u.washington.edu (now allyn at teleport.com)
Pacific Northwest Native Plant Gardening:
http://www.teleport.com/~allyn/natives/