For Denali Elementary School students, the year focused on bird vetch
Published Saturday, May 17, 2008
The foreign species have not come in peace and are ravaging the natives but Christine Villano and Deana Martin-Muth’s first-grade students are on the case.
“The vetch murdered this tree,” Jerod Ruedell announced.
He wastes no time in tearing the offending species from the tree.
Vicia cracca, or bird vetch, is an invasive plant that competes for resources alongside native plants. After a year of studying and conducting research on the plant, the students traveled to Creamer’s Field to help remove vetch.
Katie Villano, Christine’s daughter and an invasive plant ecologist from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has been helping the class grow and observe vetch in their classrooms. Villano said the vetch is a new problem that has sprouted in the last three years. Because the problem is so new, the data collected by the students is actually at the forefront of vetch research.
“They are the first people to show bird vetch grows better in burned soil,” Villano said.
Their research has even been turned over to researchers at UAF and presented at the district science fair.
“These kids are doing meaningful classwork,” Katie said.
Martin-Muth’s students have been working on the vetch problem by recording data once a week and through their observations they found vetch grew better in burned soil because the soil doesn’t have a protective ground cover that hampers vetch growth.
Villano said the students first saw vetch during their first week of school. In the fall, the vetch had bright purple flowers and although it was pretty, it was also fatal. Katie said after she explained to them what the vetch was doing to the indigenous plants, the students grew outraged and wanted to know how they could protect the native plants. Their passion inspired their year-long work on invasive plants.
The vetch they were hunting at Creamer’s Field looked a bit different.
“The other one is greener and not as brown as this and this has more tangles,” student Emiley Webb said.
Armed with gloves, boots and trashbags, the students had no mercy for the unwanted guests.
“Do you think this tree has been murdered by vetch?” Martin-Muth asked her team as they flock over to her and prepared to remove the offending plants.
After finding vetch, the students waste no time gathering it in their garbage bags. Webb doesn’t hesitate to get in close to pull the vetch near the roots to make sure it doesn’t come back.
Her groupmates are also equally dedicated and Ruedell scouts out the group’s assigned section of Creamer’s the group was assigned to. “I found a tree smothered with vetch,” Ruedell yells back to Martin-Muth.
Villano said her favorite part of the school year was working with the kids and seeing their enthusiasm.
“They feel like they’re making a difference,” Villano said.
Community Discussion
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So who decided that non-native plants are undesirables? The truth is, many of the beautiful wildflowers that grow along our Alaskan roadways are non-native varieties. Bird vetch is gorgeous! Personally, I would welcome it in my yard. Many Alaskan gardeners would love to have flowers in their gardens that would grow and bloom without a lot of pampering.
I have a hard time believing that bird vetch could kill a tree. If that were true, the tree must have been weak and sickly to begin with.
Very few, if any, domestic flowering vines will grow and survive the winter in Interior Alaska. Why try to exterminate the one exception?
The Cooperative Extension Service has photos online of bird vetch "infestations," showing green vines on fences and along roadsides. I wonder why they don't take these photos when these plants are covered with glorious violet purple flowers???
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